Abstract
BackgroundThe use of social big data is an important emerging concern in public health. Internet search volumes are useful data that can sensitively detect trends of the public's attention during a pandemic outbreak situation.ObjectiveOur study aimed to analyze the public’s interest in COVID-19 proliferation, identify the correlation between the proliferation of COVID-19 and interest in immunity and products that have been reported to confer an enhancement of immunity, and suggest measures for interventions that should be implemented from a health and medical point of view.MethodsTo assess the level of public interest in infectious diseases during the initial days of the COVID-19 outbreak, we extracted Google search data from January 20, 2020, onward and compared them to data from March 15, 2020, which was approximately 2 months after the COVID-19 outbreak began. In order to determine whether the public became interested in the immune system, we selected coronavirus, immune, and vitamin as our final search terms.ResultsThe increase in the cumulative number of confirmed COVID-19 cases that occurred after January 20, 2020, had a strong positive correlation with the search volumes for the terms coronavirus (R=0.786; P<.001), immune (R=0.745; P<.001), and vitamin (R=0.778; P<.001), and the correlations between variables were all mutually statistically significant. Moreover, these correlations were confirmed on a country basis when we restricted our analyses to the United States, the United Kingdom, Italy, and Korea. Our findings revealed that increases in search volumes for the terms coronavirus and immune preceded the actual occurrences of confirmed cases.ConclusionsOur study shows that during the initial phase of the COVID-19 crisis, the public’s desire and actions of strengthening their own immune systems were enhanced. Further, in the early stage of a pandemic, social media platforms have a high potential for informing the public about potentially helpful measures to prevent the spread of an infectious disease and provide relevant information about immunity, thereby increasing the public’s knowledge.
Highlights
Our findings revealed that increases in search volumes for the terms coronavirus and immune preceded the actual occurrences of confirmed cases
Following the onset of an infectious pneumonia that could be traced to Wuhan, China, in 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that the cause of the pneumonia was a new type of coronavirus
Social big data refers to large volumes of data that relate to people or describe people’s behaviors and technology-mediated social interactions in the digital realm [4]
Summary
Following the onset of an infectious pneumonia that could be traced to Wuhan, China, in 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that the cause of the pneumonia was a new type of coronavirus. The Pillbox project is a service that provides information such as how to take various pills that are not well known by the public and their potential side effects The use of such information improves consumer convenience and saves health care expenditures with regard to economics through the gathering of information to estimate statistics, such as the causes of disease outbreaks, rates of spread, and distribution and regional growth [2,3]. In 2009, Google predicted the spread of the flu 7 to 10 days earlier than the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) based on users’ search records for the flu [6] This prediction was confirmed in countries around the world, including South Korea, India, and China [7,8,9]. Internet search volumes are useful data that can sensitively detect trends of the public's attention during a pandemic outbreak situation
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