Public Adults Information Seeking Behaviors During Early Weeks of COVID-19 Epidemic: Early Lessons for Improvement of Epidemic Communication

Background: Public support plays a crucial in managing public health crises. Communicating with the public during a pandemic has a major role in gaining public support. Public information-seeking behaviors are the core element of epidemic communication.. Objectives: The current study aimed to investigate the Iranian information-seeking behaviors during the first three weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic in Iran. Methods: In this cross-sectional study, the use of web search queries to monitor the COVID-19 pandemic in Iran from December 2019 to March 1 2020, is investigated. The Iranian search queries for COVID-19 were evaluated from December 30, 2019, to March 1, 2020. Google trend reports were used to retrieve data on the number of search queries. Queries were categorized into “epidemic news”, “necessary protective equipment”, “prevention strategies”, and “treatment”. To analyze the data, segmented regression was applied. Also, the daily percent change (DPI) was estimated. Results: The frequency of Google searches for COVID19-related queries first increased during the period of 18 - 23 February 2020 (DPC: 34.0; P value < 0.001), and then declined to March 1, 2020 (DPS: -3.9; P value < 0.001). The most prevalent query was “Epidemic news” (54%), followed by “necessary equipment” (33%). The frequency of these two queries increased from 18 - 23 February. "Prevention strategies" was the most common search category on March 1. Conclusions: When an epidemic begins to spread, people try to get the “latest news” and “what they need to protect themselves”.