Providing early indication of regional anomalies in COVID-19 case counts in England using search engine queries.

ABSTRACT: Prior work has shown the utility of using Internet searches to track the incidence of different respiratory illnesses. Similarly, people who suffer from COVID-19 may query for their symptoms prior to accessing the medical system (or in lieu of it). To assist in the UK government's response to the COVID-19 pandemic we analyzed searches for relevant symptoms on the Bing web search engine from users in England to identify areas of the country where unexpected rises in relevant symptom searches occurred. These were reported weekly to the UK Health Security Agency to assist in their monitoring of the pandemic. Our analysis shows that searches for "fever" and "cough" were the most correlated with future case counts during the initial stages of the pandemic, with searches preceding case counts by

SUBMITTER: Yom-Tov E 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8837788 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature