ArticleScientific reports2020
Tracking COVID-19 using taste and smell loss Google searches is not a reliable strategy.
Article in Scientific reports, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
13 citing papers in PubMed.
- Congruency of multisensory olfactory stimuli.Chemical senses · 2025Article
- Article
- Predicting mobility using limited data during early stages of a pandemic.Journal of business research · 2023Article
- State-Level COVID-19 Symptom Searches and Case Data: Quantitative Analysis of Political Affiliation as a Predictor for Lag Time Using Google Trends and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Data.JMIR formative research · 2022Article
- Forecasting and Surveillance of COVID-19 Spread Using Google Trends: Literature Review.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Review
- Harnessing Food Product Reviews for Personalizing Sweetness Levels.Foods (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Article
- COVID-19 pandemic in Saint Petersburg, Russia: Combining population-based serological study and surveillance data.PloS one · 2022Article
- Article
- Analyzing Citizens' and Health Care Professionals' Searches for Smell/Taste Disorders and Coronavirus in Finland During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Infodemiological Approach Using Database Logs.JMIR public health and surveillance · 2021Article
- The rise of infodemiology and infoveillance during COVID-19 crisis.One health (Amsterdam, Netherlands) · 2021Article
- Evaluation of Twitter data for an emerging crisis: an application to the first wave of COVID-19 in the UK.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Validating deep learning inference during chest X-ray classification for COVID-19 screening.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- The relationship between Google search interest for pulmonary symptoms and COVID-19 cases using dynamic conditional correlation analysis.Scientific reports · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Web search tools are widely used by the general public to obtain health-related information, and analysis of search data is often suggested for public health monitoring. We analyzed popularity of searches related to smell loss and taste loss, recently listed as symptoms of COVID-19. Searches on sight loss and hearing loss, which are not considered as COVID-19 symptoms, were used as control. Google Trends results per region in Italy or state in the US were compared to COVID-19 incidence in the corresponding geographical areas. The COVID-19 incidence did not correlate with searches for non-symptoms, but in some weeks had high correlation with taste and smell loss searches, which also correlated with each other. Correlation of the sensory symptoms with new COVID-19 cases for each country as a whole was high at some time points, but decreased (Italy) or dramatically fluctuated over time (US). Smell loss searches correlated with the incidence of media reports in the US. Our results show that popularity of symptom searches is not reliable for pandemic monitoring. Awareness of this limitation is important during the COVID-19 pandemic, which continues to spread and to exhibit new clinical manifestations, and for potential future health threats.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.