Even before public announcements about the first cases of COVID-19 in Europe were made, at the end of January 2020, there were signs that something strange was already happening circulating on social media. A new study of researchers at IMT School for Advanced Study Lucca, published in Scientific Reports, has identified routes of growing concern about pneumonia on posts published on Twitter in seven countries, between late 2019 and early 2020. An analysis of the posts shows that the “explosion” has taken place from the geographical areas where the primary school is located a subsequent outbreak occurred.
To conduct the research, the authors first created a unique database with all the messages posted on Twitter containing the key word “pneumonia” in the seven most spoken languages in the European Union – English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Polish and Dutch – from December 2014 to March 1, 2020. The word “pneumonia” was chosen because the disease is the most serious cause of SARS-CoV-2, and also since the 2020 flu season was quieter than its predecessors, so there was no reason to think that it is responsible for all the comments and concerns. The researchers then made a number of changes and corrections to the posts in the database to avoid overloading the number of tweets reporting pneumonia between December 2019 and January 2020, i.e. to announce in the weeks between the announcement by the World Health Organization (WHO) that the first “cases of seizures of unknown etiology” will be identified – on 31 December 2019 – and the official recognition of COVID19 as a serious communicable disease , on January 21, 2020. In particular, all tweets and retweets containing links to news about the revelation The virus was removed from the database to prevent the media from the emerging pandemic .
The authors ’analysis shows an increase in tweets referring to the keyword“ pneumonia ”in most European countries included in the study as early as January 2020, such as the expression of ongoing concern and public interest in pneumonia cases. In Italy, for example, where the first lock-in measures involving COVID-19 infections were introduced on 22 February 2020, the rate of increase in pneumonia reporting in the first few weeks of 2020 is up to quite different from the level seen in the same weeks in 2019. That is to say that potentially hidden dangerous areas were identified several weeks before the first local source of COVID- infection. 19 named (February 20, Codogno, Italy). France had the same pattern, but Spain, Poland, and the UK saw a 2-week delay.
The geo-local authors produced over 13,000 pneumonia-related prints in the same period, and found that they came directly from the regions where the first cases of disease were subsequently reported, such as region Lombardy in Italy, Madrid, Spain, and Île de France.
Following the same approach used for the keyword “pneumonia”, the researchers also developed a new data set containing the keyword “dry cough”, one of the other associated symptoms. followed by COVID-19 syndrome. Even then, they saw the same pattern, an unusually significant and statistically significant increase in the number of word referrals in the weeks leading to an increase in disease in February 2020.
“Our study builds on existing evidence that social media can be a useful tool for epidemiological study. They can help identify the first signs of new disease, before it makes an unknown multiplication, and also to monitor the spread “said Massimo Riccaboni, full professor of Economics at IMT School, who coordinated the research.
This is especially true in a situation such as the prevalent pandemic, when weaknesses in the identification of early warning signs have left many national governments blind to an unprecedented level of the health crisis. future public service. In a chronic phase of the pandemic, monitoring social media may help public health authorities reduce the risks of infectious recurrence, for example by taking tougher measures of social distance. where the diseases appear to be increasing, or vice versa in other regions. These tools could also pave the way for a unified epidemiological surveillance system managed globally by international health organizations.
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The paper “Early warning of the COVID-19 uprising across Europe can be found on social media” after publication at: http: // www.
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