Providing early indication of regional anomalies in COVID-19 case counts in England using search engine queries
Publikation: Bidrag til tidsskrift › Tidsskriftartikel › Forskning › fagfællebedømt
Standard
Providing early indication of regional anomalies in COVID-19 case counts in England using search engine queries. / Yom-Tov, Elad; Lampos, Vasileios; Inns, Thomas; Cox, Ingemar J.; Edelstein, Michael.
I: Scientific Reports, Bind 12, Nr. 1, 2373, 2022, s. 1-10.Publikation: Bidrag til tidsskrift › Tidsskriftartikel › Forskning › fagfællebedømt
Harvard
APA
Vancouver
Author
Bibtex
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
T1 - Providing early indication of regional anomalies in COVID-19 case counts in England using search engine queries
AU - Yom-Tov, Elad
AU - Lampos, Vasileios
AU - Inns, Thomas
AU - Cox, Ingemar J.
AU - Edelstein, Michael
N1 - Publisher Copyright: © 2022, The Author(s).
PY - 2022
Y1 - 2022
N2 - Prior work has shown the utility of using Internet searches to track the incidence of different respiratory illnesses. Similarly, people who suffer from COVID-19 may query for their symptoms prior to accessing the medical system (or in lieu of it). To assist in the UK government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic we analyzed searches for relevant symptoms on the Bing web search engine from users in England to identify areas of the country where unexpected rises in relevant symptom searches occurred. These were reported weekly to the UK Health Security Agency to assist in their monitoring of the pandemic. Our analysis shows that searches for “fever” and “cough” were the most correlated with future case counts during the initial stages of the pandemic, with searches preceding case counts by up to 21 days. Unexpected rises in search patterns were predictive of anomalous rises in future case counts within a week, reaching an Area Under Curve of 0.82 during the initial phase of the pandemic, and later reducing due to changes in symptom presentation. Thus, analysis of regional searches for symptoms can provide an early indicator (of more than one week) of increases in COVID-19 case counts.
AB - Prior work has shown the utility of using Internet searches to track the incidence of different respiratory illnesses. Similarly, people who suffer from COVID-19 may query for their symptoms prior to accessing the medical system (or in lieu of it). To assist in the UK government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic we analyzed searches for relevant symptoms on the Bing web search engine from users in England to identify areas of the country where unexpected rises in relevant symptom searches occurred. These were reported weekly to the UK Health Security Agency to assist in their monitoring of the pandemic. Our analysis shows that searches for “fever” and “cough” were the most correlated with future case counts during the initial stages of the pandemic, with searches preceding case counts by up to 21 days. Unexpected rises in search patterns were predictive of anomalous rises in future case counts within a week, reaching an Area Under Curve of 0.82 during the initial phase of the pandemic, and later reducing due to changes in symptom presentation. Thus, analysis of regional searches for symptoms can provide an early indicator (of more than one week) of increases in COVID-19 case counts.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85124578629&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1038/s41598-022-06340-2
DO - 10.1038/s41598-022-06340-2
M3 - Journal article
C2 - 35149764
AN - SCOPUS:85124578629
VL - 12
SP - 1
EP - 10
JO - Scientific Reports
JF - Scientific Reports
SN - 2045-2322
IS - 1
M1 - 2373
ER -
ID: 307742598