How did your country handle coronavirus? Americans, Brits have most negative responses

United by a common language and high levels of political polarization, the USA and United Kingdom stand out in a new survey as two nations whose populations are split over how well their governments handled the COVID-19 pandemic.

Across 14 mostly European countries, people were canvassed for attitudes about whether their leaders did a good job responding to the coronavirus: 52% of Americans and 54% of Britons have a negative or "bad" impression, according to the Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan "fact tank" that carried out the survey of advanced economies.

This compares with a median of about 7-in-10 – 73% – who give their nation's coronavirus response a positive or "good" review in Denmark, Australia, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, South Korea, Italy and Sweden. More than half of those surveyed in Belgium, France, Japan and Spain look favorably on the job their government has done responding to the pandemic, the surveyed says.

The country with the most positive assessment is Denmark, where 95% say authorities have done a "good" job.

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen adjusts her face mask as she arrives for a European Union summit on a coronavirus recovery package at the European Council building in Brussels on July 19.

The Scandinavian country rushed to shut its borders and imposed a strict coronavirus lockdown in mid-March almost before any other European country. It was the first nation in the region to reopen its schools and commercial sectors. An academic paper published by researchers at Denmark's Aarhus University partly attributed the country's effective management of the coronavirus crisis to its free and flexible health care system, a high level of trust in authorities and a lack of conspiracy theories or widespread panic from the public about the government's handling of the outbreak.

COVID-19:Coronavirus changes everyday life across the USA

According to John Hopkins University's COVID-19 dashboard, 624 people in Denmark have died and more than 17,000 have been infected with the coronavirus as of Thursday. In the USA, almost 180,000 people have died and more than 5.8 million people – a figure roughly equivalent to Denmark's entire population – have been infected.

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