Global Online Interest in HIV/AIDS care Services in the time of COVID-19: A Google Trends Analysis.

ABSTRACT: The Covid-19 pandemic has compounded the challenge of HIV/AIDS elimination, creating difficulties in accessing HIV care services such as early testing and treatment. This paper characterized the global online interest in HIV care services-related search terms before and during the pandemic. Global online search interest for HIV was measured using the Google Trends™ database. Spearman's rank-order correlation correlated country-specific characteristics and HIV prevalence data with the search volume index (SVI). We found a significant decrease in the global online search interest for HIV/AIDS care services-related search terms during the Covid-19 pandemic. The top countries with the highest online interest for "HIV/AIDS" search terms were Zambia, Eswatini, Malawi, Lesotho, and Zimbabwe. In a

SUBMITTER: Ornos EDB 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9707175 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature