Association of Public Interest in Preventive Measures and Increased COVID-19 Cases After the Expiration of Stay-at-Home Orders: A Cross-Sectional Study

OBJECTIVE: Following stay-at-home (SAH) orders issued for coronavirus disease (COVID-19), state-level economic concerns increased and many let these orders expire. As a method to measure public preparedness, we sought to explore the association between public interest in preventive measures and the easing of SAH orders – specifically the increases in COVID-19 cases and fatalities after the orders expired. METHODS: Search volume was collected from Google Trends for “hand sanitizer,” “social distancing,” “COVID testing,” and “contact tracing” for each state. Bivariate correlations were computed to analyze associations between public interest in preventive measures, changes in confirmed COVID-19 cases after SAH expirations, COVID-19 case-fatality rates, and by-state presidential voting percentages. RESULTS: A higher interest in preventive measures was associated with lower rates of confirmed cases after SAH orders had expired (r = −0.33), higher state-wide deaths per capita (r = 0.42), and case-fatality rates (r = 0.60). Moderate to strong negative correlations were found between states’ percentage of voters supporting the Republican nominee in 2016 and proportion of queries for average preventive measures (r = −0.77). CONCLUSION: Our investigation shows that increased public interest in COVID-19 prevention was associated with longer SAH orders and less COVID-19 cases after the SAH orders’ expiration; however, it was also associated with higher case-fatality rates.