Title
Association between the pandemic covid-19 and internet search trends in Latin America
Other title
Asociación entre la pandemia de covid-19 y las tendencias de búsqueda en internet en Latino América
Date Issued
01 October 2020
Access level
metadata only access
Resource Type
journal article
Publisher(s)
Centro Nacional de Informacion de Ciencias Medicas
Abstract
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has put the world in a health emergency. The search for information through the Internet largely reflects the interest of people in this pandemic. The present study aimed to determine the association between the relative search volume of the combined term [coronavirus + covid-19 + "new coronavirus" + covid + SARS-CoV-2], and the number of confirmed cases and daily deaths from the COVID-19. Google Trends™ was used to provide data on the relative search volume in Google for the selected terms and compare it with the number of confirmed cases and daily deaths from COVID-19 in the 10 most affected countries in Latin America, reported by the control panel of the World Health Organization on COVID-19 disease. The evaluation period was from January 01 to June 14, 2020. To obtain the relationship between quantitative variables, the Spearman correlation coefficient was used, with a level of significance (p≤ 0.05). A positive and significant correlation (p< 0.001) was found between the relative search volume of the term combined with the number of confirmed cases and deaths by day because of COVID-19. Therefore, an interest-based internet search model can be used to predict the development and peak timing of the COVID-19 outbreak.
Start page
1
End page
20
Volume
31
Issue
4
Language
Spanish
OCDE Knowledge area
Epidemiología
Subjects
Scopus EID
2-s2.0-85100806096
Source
Revista Cubana de Informacion en Ciencias de la Salud
ISSN of the container
23072113
Sources of information:
Directorio de Producción Científica
Scopus