More effective strategies are required to strengthen public awareness of COVID-19: Evidence from Google Trends

Dingtao Hu; Xiaoqi Lou; Zhiwei Xu; Nana Meng; Qiaomei Xie; Man Zhang; Yanfeng Zou; Jiatao Liu; Guoping Sun; Fang Wang

doi:10.7189/jogh.10.011003

More effective strategies are required to strengthen public awareness of COVID-19: Evidence from Google Trends

J Glob Health. 2020 Jun;10(1):011003. doi: 10.7189/jogh.10.011003.

Authors

Dingtao Hu¹, Xiaoqi Lou¹, Zhiwei Xu², Nana Meng³, Qiaomei Xie⁴, Man Zhang⁴, Yanfeng Zou⁴, Jiatao Liu⁵, Guoping Sun¹, Fang Wang¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Oncology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Anhui Medical University, Hefei, Anhui, China.
² School of Public Health, Faculty of Medicine, University of Queensland. Queensland, Australia.
³ Department of Health Services Management, School of Health Management, Anhui Medical University, Hefei, Anhui, China.
⁴ Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, School of Public Health, Anhui Medical University, Hefei, Anhui, China.
⁵ Department of Pharmacy, The First Affiliated Hospital of Anhui Medical University, Hefei, Anhui, China.

Abstract

Background: The outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has posed stress on the health and well-being of both Chinese people and the public worldwide. Global public interest in this new issue largely reflects people's attention to COVID-19 and their willingness to take precautionary actions. This study aimed to examine global public awareness of COVID-19 using Google Trends.

Methods: Using Google Trends, we retrieved public query data for terms of "2019-nCoV + SARS-CoV-2 + novel coronavirus + new coronavirus + COVID-19 + Corona Virus Disease 2019" between the 31^st December 2019 and the 24^th February 2020 in six major English-speaking countries, including the USA, the UK, Canada, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand. Dynamic series analysis demonstrates the overall change trend of relative search volume (RSV) for the topic on COVID-19. We compared the top-ranking related queries and sub-regions distribution of RSV about COVID-19 across different countries. The correlation between daily search volumes on the topic related to COVID-19 and the daily number of people infected with SARS-CoV-2 was analyzed.

Results: The overall search trend of RSV regarding COVID-19 increased during the early period of observing time and reached the first apex on 31^st January 2020. A shorter response time and a longer duration of public attention to COVID-19 was observed in public from the USA, the UK, Australia, and Canada, than that in Ireland and New Zealand. A slightly positive correlation between daily RSV about COVID-19 and the daily number of confirmed cases was observed (P < 0.05). People across countries presented a various interest to the RSV on COVID-19, and public awareness of COVID-19 was different in various sub-regions within countries.

Conclusions: The results suggest that public response time to COVID-19 was different across countries, and the overall duration of public attention was short. The current study reminds us that governments should strengthen the publicity of COVID-19 nationally, strengthen the public's vigilance and sensitivity to COVID-19, inform public the importance of protecting themselves with enough precautionary measures, and finally control the spread of COVID-19 globally.

MeSH terms

Betacoronavirus
COVID-19
Coronavirus
Coronavirus Infections / epidemiology*
Data Mining
Disease Outbreaks
Global Health
Health Communication*
Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice*
Humans
Pandemics*
Pneumonia, Viral / epidemiology*
Public Health*
SARS-CoV-2