With the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, we also saw an “Infodemic”. The WHO argues that both the amount and the varying degree of trustworthiness of available information about COVID-19 has become difficult to handle. As a result, people might avoid the news altogether. News avoidance refers to turning away from the news – either because of an interest for other content or due to a negative perception of news. Empirical research on news avoidance is scarce and suffers from an inconsistent definition of the concept. Also, news avoidance has hardly been considered in the context of the pandemic. In light of these gaps in research, the current study wants to investigate the role of news avoidance during COVID-19 in Austria, explain its relevance based on data by Google Trends and the Austrian Corona Panel and summarize findings on predictors that help to understand the phenomenon. Findings show an increased interest in news at the beginning of the first and second wave of the pandemic. Further, 70% of the Austrian population show some intentional news avoidance which might be explained by a lack of trust in news and emotional struggles related to the crisis. Implications for future research are discussed.