Association between the pandemic covid-19 and internet search trends in Latin America

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has put the world in a health emergency. The search for information through the Internet largely reflects the interest of people in this pandemic. The present study aimed to determine the association between the relative search volume of the combined term [coronavirus + covid-19 + "new coronavirus" + covid + SARS-CoV-2], and the number of confirmed cases and daily deaths from the COVID-19. Google Trends™ was used to provide data on the relative search volume in Google for the selected terms and compare it with the number of confirmed cases and daily deaths from COVID-19 in the 10 most affected countries in Latin America, reported by the control panel of the World Health Organization on COVID-19 disease. The evaluation period was from January 01 to June 14, 2020. To obtain the relationship between quantitative variables, the Spearman correlation coefficient was used, with a level of significance (p≤ 0.05). A positive and significant correlation (p< 0.001) was found between the relative search volume of the term combined with the number of confirmed cases and deaths by day because of COVID-19. Therefore, an interest-based internet search model can be used to predict the development and peak timing of the COVID-19 outbreak.