A Real-Time Infodemiology Study on Public Interest in Mpox (Monkeypox) following the World Health Organization Global Public Health Emergency Declaration

Google Trends (GT) is a useful real-time surveillance tool for epidemic outbreaks such as monkeypox (Mpox). GT provides hour-by-hour (real-time) data for the last seven days of Google searches. Non-real-time data are a random sample that encompasses search trends from 2004 and up to 72 h. Google Hea...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Information (Basel) 2023-01, Vol.14 (1), p.5
Main Authors: Bhagavathula, Akshaya Srikanth, Raubenheimer, Jacques E.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Coronaviruses
COVID-19
Data search
Disease transmission
Emergency management
Epidemics
Forecasting
Google health trends API
Google trends
Infectious diseases
infodemiology
Machine learning
monkeypox
Mpox
Probability
Public health
Real time
Search engines
Software
Surveillance
Trends
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Summary:Google Trends (GT) is a useful real-time surveillance tool for epidemic outbreaks such as monkeypox (Mpox). GT provides hour-by-hour (real-time) data for the last seven days of Google searches. Non-real-time data are a random sample that encompasses search trends from 2004 and up to 72 h. Google Health Trends (GHT) API extracts daily raw search probabilities relative to the time period and size of the underlying population. However, little is known about the utility of GT real-time surveillance and GHT API following the public health announcements. Thus, this study aimed to analyzed Mpox GT real-time, non-real-time, and GHT API data 72 h before and after the WHO declared Mpox a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC) in the top five Mpox-affected countries. Joinpoint regression was used to measure hourly percentage changes (HPC) in search volume. The WHO PHEIC statement on Mpox generated 18,225.6 per 10 million Google searches in the U.S. and Germany (946.8), and in 0–4 h, the HPC increased by an average of 103% (95% CI: 37.4–200.0). This study showed the benefits of real-time surveillance and the GHT API for monitoring online demand for information on emerging infectious diseases such as Mpox.
ISSN:2078-2489
2078-2489
DOI:10.3390/info14010005