BACKGROUND
The public health crisis, due to the new Coronavirus found in December 2019, has received unprecedented attention from the public and the media. The infodemiological analysis of queries from search engines to assess the status of search interests and the actual burden of the new virus could be an informative approach.
OBJECTIVE
The aim of the study was to assess search query data from Google Trends, to visualize the interest in search over time for the new “Coronavirus” in Google, across four English-speaking countries, namely, Australia, Canada, the UK, and the USA, and compare the search interest with the actual burden of Coronavirus in the corresponding countries.
METHODS
We used Google Trends service to assess people’s interest in searching about “Coronavirus” classified as “Virus,” from January 1, 2020 to March 13, 2020 in Australia, Canada, the UK, and the USA. Then, we evaluated top regions and their relative search volumes (SVs) and country-specific “Top” and “Rising” searches. We also evaluated the trends in the incidence of detected Coronavirus infections to find possible differences between the actual burden of the disease and search patterns by the public.
RESULTS
From January 1, 2020 to March 13, 2020, Australia was the top country searching for Coronavirus in Google, followed by Canada, the UK, and the USA. There was a noticeable bimodal pattern in searching for Coronavirus, mostly in late January 2020, and then from early March 2020. Search interest in all four countries declined in the month of February 2020. Top regions in each of the four countries with the highest search interest where the ones which reported either a confirmed case of Coronavirus infection or a death due to it. None of the declarations by the World Health Organization of the nature of this pandemic appeared to have caused major changes in the search patterns in Google.
CONCLUSIONS
Search for ‘Coronavirus’ increased exponentially, in all four countries, mostly in Australia. The month of February 2020 could be considered a ‘lost opportunity’ in terms of acting on the momentum of searching by people on Google about the Coronavirus. The increased interest in searching for keywords related to Coronavirus and its symptoms shows the possible focus areas of awareness campaigns in increasing societal demand for health information on the Web, to be met in community-wide communication or awareness interventions, should another pandemic occur in the future.
Comparing public interest on stone disease between developed and underdeveloped nations: are search patterns on google trends similar?