ArticleThe Lancet regional health. Western Pacific2020
An assessment of self-reported COVID-19 related symptoms of 227,898 users of a social networking service in Japan: Has the regional risk changed after the declaration of the state of emergency?
Article in The Lancet regional health. Western Pacific, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 27 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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27 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Mid and long-term neurological and neuropsychiatric manifestations of post-COVID-19 syndrome: A meta-analysis.Journal of the neurological sciences · 2022Pooled it
- New-Onset Hypertension Following COVID-19 Among Aseer Residents, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia; Community-Based Screening.International journal of general medicine · 2025Article
- Impact of COVID-19 pandemic on the dynamic of patients with oral and maxillofacial trauma: interrupted time-series analysis.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Syndromic surveillance of population-level COVID-19 burden with cough monitoring in a hospital emergency waiting room.Frontiers in public health · 2024Article
- Engaging a national-scale cohort of smart thermometer users in participatory surveillance.NPJ digital medicine · 2023Article
- Smart Thermometer-Based Participatory Surveillance to Discern the Role of Children in Household Viral Transmission During the COVID-19 Pandemic.JAMA network open · 2023Article
- Seroprevalence of SARS-CoV2 Infections in Health Care Personnel in a Long-Term Care Institution After the First Wave of the Pandemic: A Cross-Sectional Study.Workplace health & safety · 2023Article
- Designing Digital COVID-19 Screening: Insights and Deliberations.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2023Article
- Covid-19 vaccination reported side effects and hesitancy among the Syrian population: a cross-sectional study.Annals of medicine · 2023Article
- Reported COVID-19 vaccines side effects among Jordanian population: a cross sectional study.Human vaccines & immunotherapeutics · 2022Article
- SARS-CoV-2 suppression and early closure of bars and restaurants: a longitudinal natural experiment.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Longitudinal analysis of built environment and aerosol contamination associated with isolated COVID-19 positive individuals.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Covidseeker: A Geospatial Temporal Surveillance Tool.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Review
- Project and Prototype of Mobile Application for Monitoring the Global COVID-19 Epidemiological Situation.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Review
- Exploring the Spatiotemporal Evolution and Sustainable Driving Factors of Information Flow Network: A Public Search Attention Perspective.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2022Article
- Demographic and professional risk factors of SARS-CoV-2 infections among physicians in low- and middle-income settings: Findings from a representative survey in two Brazilian states.PLOS global public health · 2022Article
- Comparison of longitudinal trends in self-reported symptoms and COVID-19 case activity in Ontario, Canada.PloS one · 2022Article
- A review of GIS methodologies to analyze the dynamics of COVID-19 in the second half of 2020.Transactions in GIS : TG · 2021Review
- Assessing the capacity of symptom scores to predict COVID-19 positivity in Nigeria: a national derivation and validation cohort study.BMJ open · 2021Article
- Decreased human respiratory syncytial virus activity during the COVID-19 pandemic in Japan: an ecological time-series analysis.BMC infectious diseases · 2021Article
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15 authors.
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Abstract
backgroundIn the absence of widespread testing, symptomatic monitoring efforts may allow for understanding the epidemiological situation of the spread of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in Japan. We obtained data from a social networking service (SNS) messaging application that monitors self-reported COVID-19 related symptoms in real time in Fukuoka Prefecture, Japan. We aimed at not only understanding the epidemiological situation of COVID-19 in the prefecture, but also highlighting the usefulness of symptomatic monitoring approaches that rely on self-reporting using SNS during a pandemic, and informing the assessment of Japan's emergency declaration over COVID-19.
methodsWe analysed symptoms data (fever over 37.5° and a strong feeling of weariness or shortness of breath), reported voluntarily via SNS chatbot by 227,898 residents of Fukuoka Prefecture during March 27 to May 3, 2020, including April 7, when a state of emergency was declared. We estimated the spatial correlation coefficient between the number of the self-reported cases of COVID-19 related symptoms and the number of PCR confirmed COVID-19 cases in the period (obtained from the prefecture website); and estimated the empirical Bayes age- and sex-standardised incidence ratio (EBSIR) of the symptoms in the period, compared before and after the declaration. The number of symptom cases was weighted by age and sex to reflect the regional population distribution according to the 2015 national census.
findingsOf the participants, 3.47% reported symptoms. There was a strong spatial correlation of 0.847 (p < 0.001) at municipality level between the weighted number of self-reported symptoms and the number of COVID-19 cases for both symptoms. The EBSIR at post-code level was not likely to change remarkably before and after the declaration of the emergency, but the gap in EBSIR between high-risk and low-risk areas appeared to have increased after the declaration.
interpretationWhile caution is necessary as the data was limited to SNS users, the self-reported COVID-19 related symptoms considered in the study had high epidemiological evaluation ability. In addition, though based on visual assessment, after the declaration of the emergency, regional containment of the infection risk might have strengthened to some extent. SNS, which can provide a high level of real-time, voluntary symptom data collection, can be used to assess the epidemiology of a pandemic, as well as to assist in policy assessments such as emergency declarations.
fundingThe present work was supported in part by a grant from the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare of Japan (H29-Gantaisaku-ippan-009).
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