Google Searches May Shed Light on New Coronavirus Symptoms and Hot Zones

Google searches could potentially help determine new Coronavirus hot spots, data scientist wrote in an op-ed in the New York Times.

Can Google Search Terms Help Health Officials?

Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, writes that Google searches could be used to monitor the situation and potentially pinpoint new coronavirus hot spots.

Stephens-Davidowitz pointed out that searches for “I can’t smell,” increased a lot in New York and Louisiana last week, as New York remains the epicenter of the outbreak in the US and Louisiana is also one of the hardest-hit states.

Some indicators that you might be infected with the coronavirus are the loss of taste and smell, and when it comes to losing your sense of smell, it turns out Ecuador is making more searches on that symptom than any other Country, as “no puedo oler” is 10 times more searched in Ecuador than it is in Spain, despite the massive gap in reported cases between the two countries.

While it’s not guaranteed that people are infected based on their searches in Google, it can possibly provide clues to health officials on potential new danger zones and new symptoms or mutations of the virus. Early quarantines could become much easier to exercise to contain the spread in zones not hit hard yet.

So far, the coronavirus has infected more than 1.2 million people worldwide and over 70,000 have succumbed to it. No cure or vaccine has been discovered yet as officials implement lock-downs and measures like “social distancing” to limit the spread as much as possible.