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. 2022 Jul 4:10:844543.
doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2022.844543. eCollection 2022.

Utilizing Internet Search Volume to Monitor Stages of Change in Vaccine Hesitancy During the COVID-19 Outbreaks

Yu-Tung Lan  1 , Shiow-Ing Wu  2 , Yu-Hsuan Lin  2   3   4   5
Affiliations

Utilizing Internet Search Volume to Monitor Stages of Change in Vaccine Hesitancy During the COVID-19 Outbreaks

Yu-Tung Lan et al. Front Public Health. .

Abstract

Real-time vaccine hesitancy surveillance is needed to better understand changes in vaccination behaviors. We aim to understand the association between coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreaks and population vaccine hesitancy and to monitor the dynamic changes in vaccination behaviors. We used the autoregressive integrated moving average model to examine the association between daily internet search volume for vaccines and two waves of COVID-19 local outbreaks in Taiwan from 19 March to 25 May, 2021. During the small-scale outbreak, the search volume increased significantly for 7 out of 22 days with an average increase of 17.3% ± 10.7% from the expected search volume. During the large-scale outbreak, the search volume increased significantly for 14 out of 14 days, with an average increase of 58.4% ± 14.7%. There was a high correlation between the search volume and the number of domestic cases (r = 0.71, P < 0.001). Google Trends serves as a timely indicator to monitor the extent of population vaccine willingness.

Keywords: COVID-19; Google Trends; stages of change; vaccine hesitancy; vaccine willingness.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Internet search volume of “vaccine” in Taiwan from 19 December 2020 to 25 May 2021, the number of daily confirmed COVID-19 cases, and the cumulative vaccination doses administered during this time period. (A) The relative search volume for “vaccine”. The gray area indicates the 95% confidence interval of the expected search volume (black line). The first dotted line corresponds to the start of vaccination on March 22. The second dotted line corresponds to the start of the small-scale outbreak on April 20. The third dotted line corresponds to the start of the large-scale outbreak on May 12. (B) The log-transformed number of daily confirmed domestic (in blue) and imported (in gray) cases from 19 December 2020 to 25 May 2021. (C) The cumulative vaccination doses administered from 22 March 2021 (when vaccination began) to 25 May 2021.
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