ABSTRACT
Objective: To analyze the correlation between loss of smell/taste and the number of real confirmed cases of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) worldwide based on Google Trends data, and to explore the guiding role of smell/taste loss for the COVID-19 prevention and control. Methods: "Loss of smell" and "loss of taste" related keywords were searched in the Google Trends platform, the data were obtained from Jan. 1 2019 to Jul. 11 2021. The daily and newly confirmed COVID-19 case number were collected from World Health Organization (WHO) since Dec. 30 2019. All data were statistically analyzed by SPSS 23.0 software. The correlation was finally tested by Spearman correlation analysis. Results: A total of data from 80 weeks were collected. The retrospective analysis was performed on the new trend of COVID-19 confirmed cases in a total of 186 292 441 cases worldwide. Since the epidemic of COVID-19 was recorded on the WHO website, the relative searches related to loss of smell/taste in the Google Trends platform had been increasing globally. The global relative search volumes of "loss of smell" and "loss of taste" on Google Trends was 10.23±2.58 and 16.33±2.47 before the record of epidemic while 80.25±39.81 and 80.45±40.04 after (t value was 8.67, 14.43, respectively, both P<0.001). In the United States and India, the relative searches for "loss of smell" and "loss of taste" after the record of epidemic were also much higher than before (all P<0.001). The correlation coefficients between the trend of weekly new COVID-19 cases and the Google Trends of "loss of smell" in the global, United States, and India was 0.53, 0.76, and 0.82 respectively (all P<0.001), the correlation coefficients with Google Trends of "loss of taste" was 0.54, 0.78, and 0.82 respectively (all P<0.001). The lowest and highest point of loss of smell/taste search curves of Google Trends in different periods appeared 7 to 14 days earlier than that of the weekly newly COVID-19 confirmed cases curves, respectively. Conclusions: There is a significant positive correlation between the number of newly confirmed cases of COVID-19 worldwide and the amount of keywords, such as "loss of smell" and "loss of taste", retrieved in Google Trends. The trend of big data based on Google Trends might predict the outbreak trend of COVID-19 in advance.