Suitability of Google Trends™ for Digital Surveillance During Ongoing COVID-19 Epidemic: A Case Study from India.

ABSTRACT:

Objective

Digital surveillance has shown mixed results as a supplement to traditional surveillance. Google Trends™ (GT) (Google, Mountain View, CA, United States) has been used for digital surveillance of H1N1, Ebola and MERS. We used GT to correlate the information seeking on COVID-19 with number of tests and cases in India.

Methods

Data was obtained on daily tests and cases from WHO, ECDC and covid19india.org. We used a comprehensive search strategy to retrieve GT data on COVID-19 related information-seeking behavior in India between January 1 and May 31, 2020 in the form of relative search volume (RSV). We also used time-lag correlation analysis to assess the temporal relationships between RSV and daily new COVID-19 cases and tests.

Results

GT RSV showed high time-

SUBMITTER: Satpathy P 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8460424 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature