Abstract
The volume of Google searches for pneumonia in the US exhibited an substantial increase at the beginning of September 2019, reaching a peak between the last week of November 2019 and the second week of January 2020, while the seasonal peak of influenza was reached later, between the 1st and 7th week of 2020 according to the CDC. The search trends then mirrored the subsequent number of new weekly COVID-19 cases diagnosed in the US. The Google Trends score for pneumonia between last week of November 2019 and the second week of January 2020 was found to be over 20% higher than that recorded during the last week of November 2018 and the second week of January 2019 (56±10 vs. 46±3; p=0.015). Although this abnormal increase cannot be directly attributed to searches carried out by individuals with SARS-CoV-2 infection, this phenomenon is supportive of findings that SARS-CoV-2 may have started to circulate in the US before January 2020.
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