Indian Public Interest and Anxiety Surge in COVID-19 Subsequent to a Strong Epidemic in Italy and Spain through a Survey using Google Trends

Abstract

A new Coronavirus has caused panic wave among the public all over the world. It is being discussed extensively in various news channels and papers each day. The most affected countries are China, Italy, Spain, and USA. In India, more than 5000 cases have been reported and the number is increasing day by day. This paper has undertaken good use of Google Trends to analyse the public interest in COVID-19 outbreak. Google Trends has been used to collect data pertaining to Indian public interest in Corona Virus.Methods: Current data pertaining to public interest in Corona virus is extracted from Google Trends website by entering the search topic: COVID-19 with location set as India. The reported period is 10th March 2020 to 8th April 2020. The second data regarding mental health query of Indians is also extracted from the same tool.Results: As per the Google Trends observed for Indian public interest in COVID-19, the interest started rising from 10th March,2020 and was gradually moving up till 21stMarch 2020 while number of reported corona cases in India had started emerging and lockdown was enforced on the public movement. The interest in COVID-19 doubled in just a time of one week from 21st march, 2020.Similar trend has been found with Indian mental hearth search queries showing first peak on 13th March, second on 19th and third on 24th March 2020. The last peak which is highest one involves almost triple population than the first peak. Hence Google trends can be used to predict the mental health and sensitivity of the people towards disease.