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. 2016 Sep 6:6:32920.
doi: 10.1038/srep32920.

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

Soo-Yong Shin  1 , Dong-Woo Seo  2 , Jisun An  3 , Haewoon Kwak  3 , Sung-Han Kim  4 , Jin Gwack  5 , Min-Woo Jo  6
Affiliations

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

Soo-Yong Shin et al. Sci Rep. .

Abstract

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", "" ("MERS (in Korean)"), "" ("MERS symptoms (in Korean)"), and "" ("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.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. Trends of representative keywords “MERS (in Korean)” (“”) obtained via Google search and Twitter, the number of new laboratory-confirmed MERS cases, and the number of quarantined cases.
The data are normalized to the maximum value of each dataset.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Lag correlations between new laboratory-confirmed cases of Middle East respiratory syndrome and (a) search keywords in Google and (b) tweets on Twitter.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Lag correlations between the number of quarantined cases and (a) the search keywords in Google and (b) tweets on Twitter.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Lag correlations between new laboratory-confirmed cases of Middle East respiratory and (a) the search keywords in Google and (b) tweets on Twitter from June 3, 2015 to June 25, 2015.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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