Department of Oncology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Anhui Medical University, Hefei, Anhui, China.
School of Public Health, Faculty of Medicine, University of Queensland. Queensland, Australia.
J Glob Health. 2020 Jun;10(1):011003. doi: 10.7189/jogh.10.011003.
The outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has posed stress on the health and well-being of both Chinese people and the public worldwide. Global public interest in this new issue largely reflects people's attention to COVID-19 and their willingness to take precautionary actions. This study aimed to examine global public awareness of COVID-19 using Google Trends.
Using Google Trends, we retrieved public query data for terms of "2019-nCoV + SARS-CoV-2 + novel coronavirus + new coronavirus + COVID-19 + Corona Virus Disease 2019" between the 31 December 2019 and the 24 February 2020 in six major English-speaking countries, including the USA, the UK, Canada, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand. Dynamic series analysis demonstrates the overall change trend of relative search volume (RSV) for the topic on COVID-19. We compared the top-ranking related queries and sub-regions distribution of RSV about COVID-19 across different countries. The correlation between daily search volumes on the topic related to COVID-19 and the daily number of people infected with SARS-CoV-2 was analyzed.
The overall search trend of RSV regarding COVID-19 increased during the early period of observing time and reached the first apex on 31 January 2020. A shorter response time and a longer duration of public attention to COVID-19 was observed in public from the USA, the UK, Australia, and Canada, than that in Ireland and New Zealand. A slightly positive correlation between daily RSV about COVID-19 and the daily number of confirmed cases was observed ( < 0.05). People across countries presented a various interest to the RSV on COVID-19, and public awareness of COVID-19 was different in various sub-regions within countries.
The results suggest that public response time to COVID-19 was different across countries, and the overall duration of public attention was short. The current study reminds us that governments should strengthen the publicity of COVID-19 nationally, strengthen the public's vigilance and sensitivity to COVID-19, inform public the importance of protecting themselves with enough precautionary measures, and finally control the spread of COVID-19 globally.
2019 年冠状病毒病（COVID-19）的爆发给中**民和全球公众的健康和福祉带来了压力。全球公众对这一新问题的广泛关注主要反映了人们对 COVID-19 的关注以及他们采取预防措施的意愿。本研究旨在使用谷歌趋势（Google Trends）研究全球公众对 COVID-19 的认识。
使用谷歌趋势（Google Trends），我们检索了 2019 年 12 月 31 日至 2020 年 2 月 24 日期间六个主要英语国家（美国、英国、加拿大、爱尔兰、澳大利亚和新西兰）关于“2019-nCoV+SARS-CoV-2+新型冠状病毒+新的冠状病毒+COVID-19+2019 年冠状病毒病”的公众查询数据。动态序列分析展示了 COVID-19 主题相对搜索量（RSV）的总体变化趋势。我们比较了不同国家 COVID-19 的 RSV 排名最高的相关查询和子区域分布。分析了与 COVID-19 相关主题的每日搜索量与每日 SARS-CoV-2 感染人数之间的相关性。
观察期内，COVID-19 主题的 RSV 整体搜索趋势呈上升趋势，并于 2020 年 1 月 31 日达到第一个高峰。与爱尔兰和新西兰相比，来自美国、英国、澳大利亚和加拿大的公众对 COVID-19 的反应时间更短，对 COVID-19 的关注时间更长。与 COVID-19 相关的每日 RSV 与每日确诊病例数之间存在轻微正相关（<0.05）。各国公众对 COVID-19 的 RSV 表现出不同的兴趣，各国不同地区对 COVID-19 的公众意识也存在差异。
结果表明，各国公众对 COVID-19 的反应时间不同，公众对 COVID-19 的关注时间总体较短。本研究提醒我们，各国政府应加强 COVID-19 的全国宣传，增强公众对 COVID-19 的警惕性和敏感性，告知公众采取足够的预防措施保护自己的重要性，并最终控制 COVID-19 在全球的传播。
