Infodemiological study of COVID-19 in Latin America and The Caribbean

Background Infodemiology has been widely used to assess epidemics. In light of the recent pandemic, we use Google Search data to explore online interest about COVID-19 and related topics in 20 countries of Latin America and the Caribbean. Method Data from Google Trends from 2019/12/30 to 2020/04/25 regarding COVID-19 and other related topics were retrieved and correlated with official data on COVID-19 cases and with national epidemiological indicators. Results The Latin American and Caribbean countries with the most interest for COVID19 were Peru (100%) and Panama (98.39%). No correlation was found between this interest and national epidemiological indicators. The global and local response time were 20.2±1.2 days and 16.7±15 days, respectively. The duration of public attention was 64.8±12.5 days. The most popular topics related to COVID-19 were: the country’s situation (100 ± 0) and coronavirus symptoms (36.82±16.16). Most countries showed a strong or moderated (r=0.72) significant correlation between searches related to COVID-19 and daily new cases. In addition, the highest significant lag correlation was found on day 13.35±5.76 (r=0.79). Conclusions Interest shown by Latin American and Caribbean countries for COVID-19 was high. The degree of online interest in a country does not clearly reflect the magnitude of their epidemiological indicators. The response time and the lag correlation were greater than in European and Asian countries. Little interest was found for preventive measures. Strong correlation between searches for COVID-19 and daily new cases suggests a predictive utility that should be investigated by further studies.