Department of Psychiatry, Yonsei University Wonju College of Medicine, Wonju, Republic of Korea.
Department of Psychology, Duksung Women's University, Seoul, Republic of Korea.
J Med Internet Res. 2021 Jun 18;23(6):e26368. doi: 10.2196/26368.
The use of social big data is an important emerging concern in public health. Internet search volumes are useful data that can sensitively detect trends of the public's attention during a pandemic outbreak situation.
Our study aimed to analyze the public's interest in COVID-19 proliferation, identify the correlation between the proliferation of COVID-19 and interest in immunity and products that have been reported to confer an enhancement of immunity, and suggest measures for interventions that should be implemented from a health and medical point of view.
To assess the level of public interest in infectious diseases during the initial days of the COVID-19 outbreak, we extracted Google search data from January 20, 2020, onward and compared them to data from March 15, 2020, which was approximately 2 months after the COVID-19 outbreak began. In order to determine whether the public became interested in the immune system, we selected coronavirus, immune, and vitamin as our final search terms.
The increase in the cumulative number of confirmed COVID-19 cases that occurred after January 20, 2020, had a strong positive correlation with the search volumes for the terms coronavirus (R=0.786; P<.001), immune (R=0.745; P<.001), and vitamin (R=0.778; P<.001), and the correlations between variables were all mutually statistically significant. Moreover, these correlations were confirmed on a country basis when we restricted our analyses to the United States, the United Kingdom, Italy, and Korea. Our findings revealed that increases in search volumes for the terms coronavirus and immune preceded the actual occurrences of confirmed cases.
Our study shows that during the initial phase of the COVID-19 crisis, the public's desire and actions of strengthening their own immune systems were enhanced. Further, in the early stage of a pandemic, social media platforms have a high potential for informing the public about potentially helpful measures to prevent the spread of an infectious disease and provide relevant information about immunity, thereby increasing the public's knowledge.
利用社会大数据是公共卫生领域一个新兴的重要关注点。互联网搜索量是一种有用的数据，可以敏感地检测到在大流行爆发期间公众关注的趋势。
本研究旨在分析公众对 COVID-19 传播的兴趣，确定 COVID-19 传播与已报道的增强免疫力的免疫和产品之间的相关性，并从健康和医学的角度提出应实施的干预措施。
为了评估 COVID-19 爆发初期公众对传染病的兴趣水平，我们从 2020 年 1 月 20 日起提取 Google 搜索数据，并将其与 2020 年 3 月 15 日的数据进行比较，后者大约是 COVID-19 爆发开始后的 2 个月。为了确定公众是否对免疫系统产生了兴趣，我们选择了冠状病毒、免疫和维生素作为最终的搜索词。
2020 年 1 月 20 日之后累计确诊 COVID-19 病例的增加与冠状病毒（R=0.786；P<.001）、免疫（R=0.745；P<.001）和维生素（R=0.778；P<.001）的搜索量呈强烈正相关，并且这些变量之间的相关性都是相互统计学显著的。此外，当我们将分析限制在美国、英国、意大利和韩国时，这些相关性在国家基础上也得到了证实。我们的研究结果表明，搜索冠状病毒和免疫的数量增加先于确诊病例的实际发生。
本研究表明，在 COVID-19 危机的初始阶段，公众增强自身免疫系统的愿望和行动得到了增强。此外，在大流行的早期阶段，社交媒体平台具有很高的潜力，可以向公众提供预防传染病传播的潜在有益措施的信息，并提供有关免疫力的相关信息，从而提高公众的知识水平。
