ArticleJMIR public health and surveillance2021
The Influence of Media Coverage and Governmental Policies on Google Queries Related to COVID-19 Cutaneous Symptoms: Infodemiology Study.
Article in JMIR public health and surveillance, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 papers.
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Who cites it
11 citing papers in PubMed.
- Spatiotemporal evolution of online interest in assisted reproductive technology: a two-decade global analysis through google trends.BMC public health · 2025Observational
- Evaluating the effectiveness and limitations of online health information tools in assessing the quality of medication-related content.Frontiers in public health · 2025Article
- Infodemiology of RSV in Italy (2017-2022): An Alternative Option for the Surveillance of Incident Cases in Pediatric Age?Children (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Article
- Forecasting and Surveillance of COVID-19 Spread Using Google Trends: Literature Review.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Review
- The national burden of scabies in Germany: a population-based approach using Internet search engine data.Infection · 2022Article
- Online Information of COVID-19: Visibility and Characterization of Highest Positioned Websites by Google between March and April 2020-A Cross-Country Analysis.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Article
- Understanding Health Communication Through Google Trends and News Coverage for COVID-19: Multinational Study in Eight Countries.JMIR public health and surveillance · 2021Article
- Reliability of Google Trends: Analysis of the Limits and Potential of Web Infoveillance During COVID-19 Pandemic and for Future Research.Frontiers in research metrics and analytics · 2021Article
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
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Abstract
backgroundDuring COVID-19, studies have reported the appearance of internet searches for disease symptoms before their validation by the World Health Organization. This suggested that monitoring of these searches with tools including Google Trends may help monitor the pandemic itself. In Europe and North America, dermatologists reported an unexpected outbreak of cutaneous acral lesions (eg, chilblain-like lesions) in April 2020. However, external factors such as public communications may also hinder the use of Google Trends as an infodemiology tool.
objectiveThe study aimed to assess the impact of media announcements and lockdown enforcement on internet searches related to cutaneous acral lesions during the COVID-19 outbreak in 2020.
methodsTwo searches on Google Trends, including daily relative search volumes for (1) "toe" or "chilblains" and (2) "coronavirus," were performed from January 1 to May 16, 2020, with the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Spain, and Germany as the countries of choice. The ratio of interest over time in "chilblains" and "coronavirus" was plotted. To assess the impact of lockdown enforcement and media coverage on these internet searches, we performed an interrupted time-series analysis for each country.
resultsThe ratio of interest over time in "chilblains" to "coronavirus" showed a constant upward trend. In France, Italy, and the United Kingdom, lockdown enforcement was associated with a significant slope change for "chilblain" searches with a variation coefficient of 1.06 (SE 0.42) (P=0.01), 1.04 (SE 0.28) (P<.01), and 1.21 (SE 0.44) (P=0.01), respectively. After media announcements, these ratios significantly increased in France, Spain, Italy, and the United States with variation coefficients of 18.95 (SE 5.77) (P=.001), 31.31 (SE 6.31) (P<.001), 14.57 (SE 6.33) (P=.02), and 11.24 (SE 4.93) (P=.02), respectively, followed by a significant downward trend in France (-1.82 [SE 0.45]), Spain (-1.10 [SE 0.38]), and Italy (-0.93 [SE 0.33]) (P<.001, P=0.004, and P<.001, respectively). The adjusted R
conclusionsTo date, the association between chilblain-like lesions and COVID-19 remains controversial; however, our results indicate that Google queries of "chilblain" were highly influenced by media coverage and government policies, indicating that caution should be exercised when using Google Trends as a monitoring tool for emerging diseases.
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