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      Silver Lining of COVID-19: heightened global interest in pneumococcal and influenza vaccines, an infodemiology study

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          Abstract

          Background

          Health-seeking behaviors change during pandemics and may increase with regard to illnesses with symptoms similar to the pandemic. The global reaction to COVID-19 may drive interest in vaccines for other diseases.

          Objectives

          Our study investigated the correlation between global online interest in COVID-19 and interest in CDC-recommended routine vaccines.

          Design, Settings, Measurements

          This infodemiology study used Google Trends data to quantify worldwide interest in COVID-19 and CDC-recommended vaccines using the unit search volume index (SVI), which estimates volume of online search activity relative to highest volume of searches within a specified period. SVIs from December 30, 2019 to March 30, 2020 were collected for “coronavirus (Virus)” and compared with SVIs of search terms related to CDC-recommended adult vaccines. To account for seasonal variation, we compared SVIs from December 30, 2019 to March 30, 2020 with SVIs from the same months in 2015 to 2019. We performed country-level analyses in ten COVID-19 hotspots and ten countries with low disease burden.

          Results

          There were significant positive correlations between SVIs for “coronavirus (Virus)” and search terms for pneumococcal (R=0.89, p<0.0001) and influenza vaccines (R=0.93, p<0.0001) in 2020, which were greater than SVIs for the same terms in 2015-2019 (p= 0.005, p<0.0001, respectively). Eight in ten COVID-19 hotspots demonstrated significant positive correlations between SVIs for coronavirus and search terms for pneumococcal and influenza vaccines.

          Limitations

          SVIs estimate relative changes in online interest and do not represent for people with no Internet access.

          Conclusion

          A peak in worldwide interest in pneumococcal and influenza vaccines coincided with the COVID-19 pandemic in February and March 2020. Trends are likely not seasonal in origin and may be driven by Covid-19 hotspots. Global events may change public perception about the importance of vaccines. Our findings may herald higher demand for pneumonia and influenza vaccines in the upcoming season.

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          Presenting Characteristics, Comorbidities, and Outcomes Among 5700 Patients Hospitalized With COVID-19 in the New York City Area

          Safiya Richardson, Jamie Hirsch, Mangala Narasimhan … (2020)
          There is limited information describing the presenting characteristics and outcomes of US patients requiring hospitalization for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).
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            Misinformation of COVID-19 on the Internet: Infodemiology Study

            Jose Cuan-Baltazar, María Muñoz-Pérez, Carolina Robledo-Vega … (2020)
            Background The internet has become an important source of health information for users worldwide. The novel coronavirus caused a pandemic search for information with broad dissemination of false or misleading health information. Objective The aim of this study was to evaluate the quality and readability of online information about the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), which was a trending topic on the internet, using validated instruments and relating the quality of information to its readability. Methods The search was based on the term “Wuhan Coronavirus” on the Google website (February 6, 2020). At the search time, the terms “COVID-19” or “SARS-CoV-2” (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2) did not exist. Critical analysis was performed on the first 110 hits using the Health on the Net Foundation Code of Conduct (HONcode), the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) benchmark, the DISCERN instrument, and Google ranking. Results The first 110 websites were critically analyzed, and only 1.8% (n=2) of the websites had the HONcode seal. The JAMA benchmark showed that 39.1% (n=43) of the websites did not have any of the categories required by this tool, and only 10.0% (11/110) of the websites had the four quality criteria required by JAMA. The DISCERN score showed that 70.0% (n=77) of the websites were evaluated as having a low score and none were rated as having a high score. Conclusions Nonhealth personnel and the scientific community need to be aware about the quality of the information they read and produce, respectively. The Wuhan coronavirus health crisis misinformation was produced by the media, and the misinformation was obtained by users from the internet. The use of the internet has a risk to public health, and, in cases like this, the governments should be developing strategies to regulate health information on the internet without censuring the population. By February 6, 2020, no quality information was available on the internet about COVID-19.
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              Using internet searches for influenza surveillance.

              Philip Polgreen, Yiling Chen, David Pennock … (2008)
              The Internet is an important source of health information. Thus, the frequency of Internet searches may provide information regarding infectious disease activity. As an example, we examined the relationship between searches for influenza and actual influenza occurrence. Using search queries from the Yahoo! search engine ( http://search.yahoo.com ) from March 2004 through May 2008, we counted daily unique queries originating in the United States that contained influenza-related search terms. Counts were divided by the total number of searches, and the resulting daily fraction of searches was averaged over the week. We estimated linear models, using searches with 1-10-week lead times as explanatory variables to predict the percentage of cultures positive for influenza and deaths attributable to pneumonia and influenza in the United States. With use of the frequency of searches, our models predicted an increase in cultures positive for influenza 1-3 weeks in advance of when they occurred (P < .001), and similar models predicted an increase in mortality attributable to pneumonia and influenza up to 5 weeks in advance (P < .001). Search-term surveillance may provide an additional tool for disease surveillance.
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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                Edward Christopher Dee
                Journal
                Journal ID (nlm-ta): Vaccine
                Journal ID (iso-abbrev): Vaccine
                Title: Vaccine
                Publisher: Elsevier Ltd.
                ISSN (Print): 0264-410X
                ISSN (Electronic): 1873-2518
                Publication date PMC-release: 25 June 2020
                Publication date (Electronic): 25 June 2020
                Affiliations
                [a ]University of the Philippines College of Medicine, Philippines
                [b ]Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA
                Author notes
                [* ]Corresponding author at: Harvard Medical School, 25 Shattuck Street, Boston, MA, 02115, USA Edward_Dee@ 123456hms.harvard.edu
                Article
                Publisher ID: S0264-410X(20)30855-0
                DOI: 10.1016/j.vaccine.2020.06.069
                PMC ID: 7315971
                PubMed ID: 32620371
                SO-VID: 7822839f-46f1-4d83-acfd-d3e3aef79ec4
                Copyright © © 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
                License:

                Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active.

                History
                Date received : 8 April 2020
                Date revision received : 20 June 2020
                Date accepted : 22 June 2020
                Categories
                Subject: Article

                ScienceOpen disciplines: Infectious disease & Microbiology
                Keywords: covid-19,coronavirus,pneumococcal vaccine,influenza vaccine,online health information,health-seeking behavior,patient education,infodemiology
                Data availability:
                ScienceOpen disciplines: Infectious disease & Microbiology
                Keywords: covid-19, coronavirus, pneumococcal vaccine, influenza vaccine, online health information, health-seeking behavior, patient education, infodemiology

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