IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0269573.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Using Google Health Trends to investigate COVID-19 incidence in Africa

Author

Listed:
  • Alexander Fulk
  • Daniel Romero-Alvarez
  • Qays Abu-Saymeh
  • Jarron M Saint Onge
  • A Townsend Peterson
  • Folashade B Agusto

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused over 500 million cases and over six million deaths globally. From these numbers, over 12 million cases and over 250 thousand deaths have occurred on the African continent as of May 2022. Prevention and surveillance remains the cornerstone of interventions to halt the further spread of COVID-19. Google Health Trends (GHT), a free Internet tool, may be valuable to help anticipate outbreaks, identify disease hotspots, or understand the patterns of disease surveillance. We collected COVID-19 case and death incidence for 54 African countries and obtained averages for four, five-month study periods in 2020–2021. Average case and death incidences were calculated during these four time periods to measure disease severity. We used GHT to characterize COVID-19 incidence across Africa, collecting numbers of searches from GHT related to COVID-19 using four terms: ‘coronavirus’, ‘coronavirus symptoms’, ‘COVID19’, and ‘pandemic’. The terms were related to weekly COVID-19 case incidences for the entire study period via multiple linear and weighted linear regression analyses. We also assembled 72 variables assessing Internet accessibility, demographics, economics, health, and others, for each country, to summarize potential mechanisms linking GHT searches and COVID-19 incidence. COVID-19 burden in Africa increased steadily during the study period. Important increases for COVID-19 death incidence were observed for Seychelles and Tunisia. Our study demonstrated a weak correlation between GHT and COVID-19 incidence for most African countries. Several variables seemed useful in explaining the pattern of GHT statistics and their relationship to COVID-19 including: log of average weekly cases, log of cumulative total deaths, and log of fixed total number of broadband subscriptions in a country. Apparently, GHT may best be used for surveillance of diseases that are diagnosed more consistently. Overall, GHT-based surveillance showed little applicability in the studied countries. GHT for an ongoing epidemic might be useful in specific situations, such as when countries have significant levels of infection with low variability. Future studies might assess the algorithm in different epidemic contexts.

Suggested Citation

  • Alexander Fulk & Daniel Romero-Alvarez & Qays Abu-Saymeh & Jarron M Saint Onge & A Townsend Peterson & Folashade B Agusto, 2022. "Using Google Health Trends to investigate COVID-19 incidence in Africa," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 17(6), pages 1-15, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0269573
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0269573
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0269573
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0269573&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0269573?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Brodeur, Abel & Clark, Andrew E. & Fleche, Sarah & Powdthavee, Nattavudh, 2021. "COVID-19, lockdowns and well-being: Evidence from Google Trends," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 193(C).
    2. Elizabeth J. Williamson & Alex J. Walker & Krishnan Bhaskaran & Seb Bacon & Chris Bates & Caroline E. Morton & Helen J. Curtis & Amir Mehrkar & David Evans & Peter Inglesby & Jonathan Cockburn & Helen, 2020. "Factors associated with COVID-19-related death using OpenSAFELY," Nature, Nature, vol. 584(7821), pages 430-436, August.
    3. Arora, Vishal S. & McKee, Martin & Stuckler, David, 2019. "Google Trends: Opportunities and limitations in health and health policy research," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 123(3), pages 338-341.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Dorn, Florian & Lange, Berit & Braml, Martin & Gstrein, David & Nyirenda, John L.Z. & Vanella, Patrizio & Winter, Joachim & Fuest, Clemens & Krause, Gérard, 2023. "The challenge of estimating the direct and indirect effects of COVID-19 interventions – Toward an integrated economic and epidemiological approach," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 49(C).
    2. Foliano, Francesca & Tonei, Valentina & Sevilla, Almudena, 2024. "Social restrictions, leisure and well-being," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(C).
    3. Kahanec, Martin & Lafférs, Lukáš & Schmidpeter, Bernhard, 2021. "The Impact of Mass Antigen Testing for COVID-19 on the Prevalence of the Disease," GLO Discussion Paper Series 775, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    4. Silverio-Murillo, Adan & Hoehn-Velasco, Lauren & Rodriguez Tirado, Abel & Balmori de la Miyar, Jose Roberto, 2021. "COVID-19 blues: Lockdowns and mental health-related google searches in Latin America," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 281(C).
    5. Brandily, Paul & Brébion, Clément & Briole, Simon & Khoury, Laura, 2021. "A poorly understood disease? The impact of COVID-19 on the income gradient in mortality over the course of the pandemic," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 140(C).
    6. Beland, Louis-Philippe & Brodeur, Abel & Haddad, Joanne & Mikola, Derek, 2020. "Covid-19, Family Stress and Domestic Violence: Remote Work, Isolation and Bargaining Power," GLO Discussion Paper Series 571, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    7. Frijters, Paul & Johnston, David W. & Knott, Rachel & Torgler, Benno, 2021. "Resilience to Disaster: Evidence from Daily Wellbeing Data," IZA Discussion Papers 14220, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    8. Andrew E. Clark & Conchita D'Ambrosio & Anthony Lepinteur, 2020. "The Fall in Income Inequality during COVID-19 in Five European Countries," Working Papers 565, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
    9. Mathias Huebener & Sevrin Waights & C. Katharina Spiess & Nico A. Siegel & Gert G. Wagner, 2021. "Parental well-being in times of Covid-19 in Germany," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 19(1), pages 91-122, March.
    10. Li, Lanlan & Yuan, Xiaomeng & Li, Jingjing & Li, Ke, 2024. "Assessing the effect of increasing block tariffs for residential natural gas in Hefei City, China," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 90(C).
    11. Loiacono, Luisa & Puglisi, Riccardo & Rizzo, Leonzio & Secomandi, Riccardo, 2022. "Pandemic knowledge and regulation effectiveness: Evidence from COVID-19," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(3), pages 768-783.
    12. Borau, Sylvie & Couprie, Hélène & Hopfensitz, Astrid, 2022. "The prosociality of married people: Evidence from a large multinational sample," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 92(C).
    13. Prettyman, Alexa, 2024. "Underreporting child maltreatment during the pandemic: Evidence from Colorado," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 156(C).
    14. Cebrián, Eduardo & Domenech, Josep, 2024. "Addressing Google Trends inconsistencies," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 202(C).
    15. Ruoshui He & Jonna Rickardsson & Charlotta Mellander, 2024. "Geography, age, and wellbeing following the COVID-19 shock," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 73(4), pages 1959-1994, December.
    16. Ayala, Luis & Bárcena-Martín, Elena & Cantó, Olga & Navarro, Carolina, 2022. "COVID-19 lockdown and housing deprivation across European countries," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 298(C).
    17. Fari Aftab & Juliane Scheffel & David Spencer, 2025. "The subjective well-being of immigrants and natives during Covid-19," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 38(1), pages 1-21, March.
    18. Andrew E. Clark & Conchita D’Ambrosio & Anthony Lepinteur, 2021. "The fall in income inequality during COVID-19 in four European countries," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 19(3), pages 489-507, September.
    19. Brodeur, Abel & Cook, Nikolai & Wright, Taylor, 2021. "On the effects of COVID-19 safer-at-home policies on social distancing, car crashes and pollution," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 106(C).
    20. Jenkinson, J.I.R. & Wigle, J. & Richard, L. & Tibebu, T. & Orkin, A.M. & Thulien, N.S. & Kiran, T. & Gogosis, E. & Crichlow, F. & Dyer, A.P. & Gabriel, M.D. & Hwang, S.W., 2025. "Structural violence as a driver of COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy and low vaccine uptake among people experiencing homelessness in Toronto, Canada: A qualitative study," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 365(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0269573. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.