Medicine School, Universidad Anáhuac Puebla, San Andres Cholula, Mexico.
Facultad de Medicina, Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, Puebla, Mexico.
JMIR Public Health Surveill. 2020 Apr 9;6(2):e18444. doi: 10.2196/18444.
The internet has become an important source of health information for users worldwide. The novel coronavirus caused a pandemic search for information with broad dissemination of false or misleading health information.
The aim of this study was to evaluate the quality and readability of online information about the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), which was a trending topic on the internet, using validated instruments and relating the quality of information to its readability.
The search was based on the term "Wuhan Coronavirus" on the Google website (February 6, 2020). At the search time, the terms "COVID-19" or "SARS-CoV-2" (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2) did not exist. Critical analysis was performed on the first 110 hits using the Health on the Net Foundation Code of Conduct (HONcode), the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) benchmark, the DISCERN instrument, and Google ranking.
The first 110 websites were critically analyzed, and only 1.8% (n=2) of the websites had the HONcode seal. The JAMA benchmark showed that 39.1% (n=43) of the websites did not have any of the categories required by this tool, and only 10.0% (11/110) of the websites had the four quality criteria required by JAMA. The DISCERN score showed that 70.0% (n=77) of the websites were evaluated as having a low score and none were rated as having a high score.
Nonhealth personnel and the scientific community need to be aware about the quality of the information they read and produce, respectively. The Wuhan coronavirus health crisis misinformation was produced by the media, and the misinformation was obtained by users from the internet. The use of the internet has a risk to public health, and, in cases like this, the governments should be developing strategies to regulate health information on the internet without censuring the population. By February 6, 2020, no quality information was available on the internet about COVID-19.
互联网已成为全球用户获取健康信息的重要来源。新型冠状病毒引发了一场大搜索，人们广泛传播虚假或误导性的健康信息。
本研究旨在使用经过验证的工具评估互联网上有关冠状病毒病（COVID-19）的在线信息的质量和可读性，并将信息质量与其可读性联系起来，COVID-19 是互联网上的热门话题。
搜索基于谷歌网站上的术语“武汉冠状病毒”（2020 年 2 月 6 日）。在搜索时，术语“COVID-19”或“严重急性呼吸系统综合征冠状病毒 2”（SARS-CoV-2）并不存在。使用健康互联网基金会行为准则（HONcode）、美国医学会（JAMA）基准、DISCERN 工具和谷歌排名对前 110 个搜索结果进行了批判性分析。
对前 110 个网站进行了批判性分析，只有 1.8%（n=2）的网站具有 HONcode 印章。JAMA 基准表明，39.1%（n=43）的网站没有该工具要求的任何类别，只有 10.0%（11/110）的网站具有 JAMA 要求的四个质量标准。DISCERN 评分显示，70.0%（n=77）的网站评分为低，没有一个网站评分为高。
非卫生人员和科学界人士分别需要了解他们阅读和制作的信息的质量。武汉冠状病毒健康危机的错误信息是由媒体产生的，用户从互联网上获取错误信息。互联网的使用对公共健康存在风险，在这种情况下，政府应该制定策略来规范互联网上的健康信息，而不会对民众进行审查。截至 2020 年 2 月 6 日，互联网上还没有关于 COVID-19 的高质量信息。
