ABSTRACT
The Covid-19 has presented an unprecedented challenge to public health worldwide. However, residents in different countries showed diverse levels of Covid-19 awareness during the outbreak and suffered from uneven health impacts. This study analyzed the global Twitter data from January 1st to June 30(th), 2020, to answer two research questions. What are the linguistic and geographical disparities of public awareness in the Covid-19 outbreak period reflected on social media? Does significant association exist between the changing Covid-19 awareness and the pandemic outbreak? We established a Twitter data mining framework calculating the Ratio index to quantify and track awareness. The lag correlations between awareness and health impacts were examined at global and country levels. Results show that users presenting the highest Covid-19 awareness were mainly those tweeting in the official languages of India and Bangladesh. Asian countries showed more disparities in awareness than European countries, and awareness in Eastern Europe was higher than in central Europe. Finally, the Ratio index had high correlations with global mortality rate, global case fatality ratio, and country-level mortality rate, with 21-31, 35-42, and 13-18 leading days, respectively. This study yields timely insights into social media use in understanding human behaviors for public health research.
ABSTRACT
The coronavirus (COVID-19) has spread to more than 135 countries and continues to spread. The virus sickened more than 90,201,652 people until January 2021 and caused 1,937,091 deaths in the world. So far, social distancing plays a vital role in controlling the coronavirus. Governments issued restrictions on traveling, institutions cancel gatherings, and citizens socially distance themselves to limit the spread of the virus. This paper aims to develop a novel time-series clustering algorithm to analyze the changes in mobility patterns caused by the COVID-19. This work will produce broader impacts in many areas, such as helping local governments locate the medical facilities and improving the social distancing recommendations for infectious disease control. © 2021 ACM.