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. 2022 Apr:10:100152.
doi: 10.1016/j.jvacx.2022.100152. Epub 2022 Mar 11.

Global interest in vaccines during the COVID-19 pandemic: Evidence from Google Trends

Aida Khakimova  1 , Leila Abdollahi  2 , Oleg Zolotarev  3 , Fakher Rahim  4   5
Affiliations

Global interest in vaccines during the COVID-19 pandemic: Evidence from Google Trends

Aida Khakimova et al. Vaccine X. 2022 Apr.

Abstract

COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) vaccines have become available; now, everyone has the opportunity to get vaccinated. We used Google Trends (GT) data to assess the global public interest in COVID-19 vaccines during the pandemic. For the analysis, a period of 17 months was chosen (from Jan 19, 2020, to Jul 04, 2021). Interest in user queries was tracked by keywords (corona vaccine, COVID-19 vaccine development, Sputnik v, Pfizer vaccine, AstraZeneca vaccine, etc.). The geographic analysis of queries was also carried out. The interest of users in the vaccine is significantly increasing. It is focused on the side effects of vaccines, and users pay attention to vaccines' developers from different countries. The correlation between the scientific publications devoted to vaccine development and such requests of users on the internet is absent. This study shows that internet search patterns can be used to gauge public attitudes towards coronavirus vaccination. Safety concerns consistently high follow an interest in vaccine side effects. This data can be used to track and predict attitudes towards vaccination of populations from COVID-19 in different countries before global vaccination becomes available to help mitigate the adverse effects of the pandemic.

Keywords: AstraZeneca vaccine; COVID-19 vaccine; Corona vaccine; Coronavirus vaccine; Pfizer vaccine; Sputnik v; Vaccination.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
A, the total relative number of requests in the world for COVID-19 Vaccine, Coronavirus Vaccine for the period from Jan 19, 2020, to Jul 04, 2021; B, the total relative number of requests in the world in terms of Corona Vaccine Development, COVID-19 Vaccine Development for the period from Jan 19, 2020, to Jul 04, 2021.
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
The total relative number of requests in the world for the terms: Chinese Corona Vaccine, US Corona Vaccine, UK Corona Vaccine, Russian Corona Vaccine, Indian Corona Vaccine, from Jan 19, 2020, to Jul 04, 2021.
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
The relative number of requests for China Corona Vaccine, US Corona Vaccine, UK Corona Vaccine, Russian Corona Vaccine, Indian Corona Vaccine by countries interested in more than two vaccines (from Jan 19, 2020, to Jul 04, 2021).
Fig. 4
Fig. 4
The total relative number of worldwide requests from Jan 19, 2020, to Jul 04, 2021.
Fig. 5
Fig. 5
Search queries as a percentage of the total number of queries in the countries from Jan 19, 2020, to Jul 04, 2021 (when considering two types of queries Sputnik v, AstraZeneca Vaccine). A, the global interest in AstraZeneca Vaccine. B, the global interest in Sputnik v vaccine.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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