ABSTRACT

Objectives

It has been demonstrated that reduction in smell and/or taste is the most predictive symptom in SARS-CoV-2/Covid-19 infection. We used Google Trends to analyze regional searches relating to loss of smell and taste across Italy, Spain, France, Brazil, and the United States of America and determined the association with reported Covid-19 cases.

Methods

In order to retrieve the data, we built a Python software program that provides access to Google Trends data via an application program interface. Daily COVID-19 case data for subregions of the five countries selected were retrieved from respective national health authorities. We sought to assess the association between raw search interest data and COVID-19 new daily cases per million for all regions individually.

Results

In total, we yielded 2188 sets of Google Trends data which included 548 time series of 4 anosmia and ageusia search concepts over the study period for 137 regions. These data indicated that differences in search interest for terms relating to anosmia and ageusia, between regions, is associated with geographical trends in new Covid-19 cases.

Conclusions

We feel that Google search trends relating to loss of smell can be utilized to identify potential Covid-19 outbreaks on a national and regional basis.

中文翻译：

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气味和味道的损失：COVID-19的新标记？使用搜索趋势跟踪在冠状病毒大流行期间减少的嗅觉。

摘要

目标

已经证明，减少气味和/或味道是SARS-CoV-2 / Covid-19感染中最可预测的症状。我们使用Google趋势分析了意大利，西班牙，法国，巴西和美利坚合众国与气味和味觉丧失有关的区域搜索，并确定了与报告的Covid-19病例的关联。

方法

为了检索数据，我们构建了一个Python软件程序，该程序可通过应用程序界面访问Google趋势数据。从相应的国家卫生部门检索了选定的五个国家的次区域的每日COVID-19病例数据。我们试图评估各个地区的原始搜索兴趣数据与百万分之COVID-19新每日病例之间的关联。

结果

在研究期间，我们总共获得了2188套Google趋势数据，其中包括548个时间序列，其中包括137个地区在研究期间的4种失语和失语症的搜索概念。这些数据表明，在新的Covid-19病例中，地区之间与失眠和听觉失调有关的术语的搜索兴趣差异与地理趋势有关。

结论

我们认为，与气味消失有关的Google搜索趋势可用于在全国和地区范围内识别潜在的Covid-19疫情。