More effective strategies are required to strengthen public awareness of COVID-19: Evidence from Google Trends

BackgroundThe 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.Methods 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 st December 2019 and the 24 th 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. ResultsThe overall search trend of RSV regarding COVID-19 increased during the early period of observing time and reached the first apex on 31 st 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 (P < 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. ConclusionsThe 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.