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High correlation of Middle East respiratory syndrome spread with Google search and Twitter trends in Korea

journal contribution
submitted on 2024-09-26, 06:49 and posted on 2024-09-26, 09:26 authored by Soo-Yong Shin, Dong-Woo Seo, Jisun An, Haewoon Kwak, Sung-Han Kim, Jin Gwack, Min-Woo Jo

The Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV) was exported to Korea in 2015,
resulting in a threat to neighboring nations. We evaluated the possibility of using a digital surveillance
system based on web searches and social media data to monitor this MERS outbreak. We collected the
number of daily laboratory-confirmed MERS cases and quarantined cases from May 11, 2015 to June 26,
2015 using the Korean government MERS portal. The daily trends observed via Google search and
Twitter during the same time period were also ascertained using Google Trends and Topsy. Correlations
among the data were then examined using Spearman correlation analysis. We found high correlations
(>0.7) between Google search and Twitter results and the number of confirmed MERS cases for the
previous three days using only four simple keywords: “MERS”, “메르스” (“MERS (in Korean)”),
“메르스” (“MERS symptoms (in Korean)”), and “메르스 병원” (“MERS hospital (in Korean)”).
Additionally, we found high correlations between the Google search and Twitter results and the number
of quarantined cases using the above keywords. This study demonstrates the possibility of using a
digital surveillance system to monitor the outbreak of MERS.

Other Information

Published in: Scientific Reports
License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
See article on publisher's website: https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep32920

Funding

Open Access funding provided by the Qatar National Library.

History

Language

  • English
  • Korean

Publisher

Springer Nature

Publication Year

  • 2016

License statement

This Item is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Institution affiliated with

  • Hamad Bin Khalifa University
  • Qatar Computing Research Institute - HBKU

Geographic coverage

Korea