Infodemiological Study Using Google Trends on Coronavirus Epidemic in Wuhan, China

Abstract

The recent emergence of a new coronavirus (2019-nCoV) has gained a high cover in public media and worldwide news. This caused a viral pneumonia in thousands of people in Wuhan, a central city of China. This short communication gives a brief introduction on how the demand for information on this new epidemic is reported through Google Trends. Author draw conclusions on current infodemiological data on 2019-nCov using three main search queries: coronavirus, SARS and MERS. Two approaches are set. First is worldwide perspective, second is Chinese perspective. Chinese perspective reveals that in China, this disease in the beginning days was more often referred to SARS then to general coronaviruses, whereas worldwide, since the beginning is more often referred to coronaviruses.