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Public interest in different types of masks and its relationship with pandemic and policy measures during the COVID-19 pandemic: a study using Google Trends data

Google Trends data have been used to investigate various themes on online information seeking. It was unclear if the population from different parts of the world shared the same amount of attention to different mask types during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study aimed to reveal which types of masks...

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Autores principales: Yeung, Andy Wai Kan, Parvanov, Emil D., Horbańczuk, Jarosław Olav, Kletecka-Pulker, Maria, Kimberger, Oliver, Willschke, Harald, Atanasov, Atanas G.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10286862/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37361173
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2023.1010674
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author Yeung, Andy Wai Kan
Parvanov, Emil D.
Horbańczuk, Jarosław Olav
Kletecka-Pulker, Maria
Kimberger, Oliver
Willschke, Harald
Atanasov, Atanas G.
author_facet Yeung, Andy Wai Kan
Parvanov, Emil D.
Horbańczuk, Jarosław Olav
Kletecka-Pulker, Maria
Kimberger, Oliver
Willschke, Harald
Atanasov, Atanas G.
author_sort Yeung, Andy Wai Kan
collection PubMed
description Google Trends data have been used to investigate various themes on online information seeking. It was unclear if the population from different parts of the world shared the same amount of attention to different mask types during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study aimed to reveal which types of masks were frequently searched by the public in different countries, and evaluated if public attention to masks could be related to mandatory policy, stringency of the policy, and transmission rate of COVID-19. By referring to an open dataset hosted at the online database Our World in Data, the 10 countries with the highest total number of COVID-19 cases as of 9th of February 2022 were identified. For each of these countries, the weekly new cases per million population, reproduction rate (of COVID-19), stringency index, and face covering policy score were computed from the raw daily data. Google Trends were queried to extract the relative search volume (RSV) for different types of masks from each of these countries. Results found that Google searches for N95 masks were predominant in India, whereas surgical masks were predominant in Russia, FFP2 masks were predominant in Spain, and cloth masks were predominant in both France and United Kingdom. The United States, Brazil, Germany, and Turkey had two predominant types of mask. The online searching behavior for masks markedly varied across countries. For most of the surveyed countries, the online searching for masks peaked during the first wave of COVID-19 pandemic before the government implemented mandatory mask wearing. The search for masks positively correlated with the government response stringency index but not with the COVID-19 reproduction rate or the new cases per million.
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spelling pubmed-102868622023-06-23 Public interest in different types of masks and its relationship with pandemic and policy measures during the COVID-19 pandemic: a study using Google Trends data Yeung, Andy Wai Kan Parvanov, Emil D. Horbańczuk, Jarosław Olav Kletecka-Pulker, Maria Kimberger, Oliver Willschke, Harald Atanasov, Atanas G. Front Public Health Public Health Google Trends data have been used to investigate various themes on online information seeking. It was unclear if the population from different parts of the world shared the same amount of attention to different mask types during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study aimed to reveal which types of masks were frequently searched by the public in different countries, and evaluated if public attention to masks could be related to mandatory policy, stringency of the policy, and transmission rate of COVID-19. By referring to an open dataset hosted at the online database Our World in Data, the 10 countries with the highest total number of COVID-19 cases as of 9th of February 2022 were identified. For each of these countries, the weekly new cases per million population, reproduction rate (of COVID-19), stringency index, and face covering policy score were computed from the raw daily data. Google Trends were queried to extract the relative search volume (RSV) for different types of masks from each of these countries. Results found that Google searches for N95 masks were predominant in India, whereas surgical masks were predominant in Russia, FFP2 masks were predominant in Spain, and cloth masks were predominant in both France and United Kingdom. The United States, Brazil, Germany, and Turkey had two predominant types of mask. The online searching behavior for masks markedly varied across countries. For most of the surveyed countries, the online searching for masks peaked during the first wave of COVID-19 pandemic before the government implemented mandatory mask wearing. The search for masks positively correlated with the government response stringency index but not with the COVID-19 reproduction rate or the new cases per million. Frontiers Media S.A. 2023-06-08 /pmc/articles/PMC10286862/ /pubmed/37361173 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2023.1010674 Text en Copyright © 2023 Yeung, Parvanov, Horbańczuk, Kletecka-Pulker, Kimberger, Willschke and Atanasov. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Public Health
Yeung, Andy Wai Kan
Parvanov, Emil D.
Horbańczuk, Jarosław Olav
Kletecka-Pulker, Maria
Kimberger, Oliver
Willschke, Harald
Atanasov, Atanas G.
Public interest in different types of masks and its relationship with pandemic and policy measures during the COVID-19 pandemic: a study using Google Trends data
title Public interest in different types of masks and its relationship with pandemic and policy measures during the COVID-19 pandemic: a study using Google Trends data
title_full Public interest in different types of masks and its relationship with pandemic and policy measures during the COVID-19 pandemic: a study using Google Trends data
title_fullStr Public interest in different types of masks and its relationship with pandemic and policy measures during the COVID-19 pandemic: a study using Google Trends data
title_full_unstemmed Public interest in different types of masks and its relationship with pandemic and policy measures during the COVID-19 pandemic: a study using Google Trends data
title_short Public interest in different types of masks and its relationship with pandemic and policy measures during the COVID-19 pandemic: a study using Google Trends data
title_sort public interest in different types of masks and its relationship with pandemic and policy measures during the covid-19 pandemic: a study using google trends data
topic Public Health
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10286862/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37361173
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2023.1010674
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