Analysing internet search activity is an established method of tracking and understanding infectious diseases, and is currently used to monitor seasonal flu. The new findings show that online search data can be used with more established approaches to develop public health surveillance methods for novel infectious diseases as well.

For the paper, published in Nature Digital Medicine https://www.nature.com/articles/s41746-021-00384-w researchers used COVID-19’s symptom profile from existing epidemiological reports to develop models of its prevalence by looking at symptom-related searches through Google.

They then recalibrated these models to reduce public interest bias – that is, the effect media coverage has on online searches. This enabled them to predict a peak in cases when applied to COVID-19.

Academics working on the models have been sharing their findings with Public Health England (PHE) on a weekly basis to support the response to the disease.

This work was reported by the following media outlets:

Telegraph https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2021/02/08/covid-outbreaks-could-spotted-weeks-early-tracking-google-searches

BBC https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/technology-53078581

New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/05/opinion/coronavirus-google-searches.html

Huffington Post https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/coronavirus-google-search-data_uk_5f8d55d4c5b67da85d1fdead

Daily Mail https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-9237155/Online-searches-Covid-symptoms-predict-peaks-17-days-happen.html

More than four out of five people (86%) of people who were uncertain or intending to refuse a COVID-19 vaccine in December 2020 changed their mind and planned on, or had already accepted, a vaccine in February 2021. This shift was consistent across all ethnic groups and all levels of social deprivation.

This work was reported on by multiple print and online media as well as professional press.  See links below.  You can read details of this analysis here.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/mar/24/covid-vaccine-hesitancy-england-wales-being-overcome-study-finds

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/coronavirus-vaccine-hesitancy-study-ucl-b1821859.html

https://inews.co.uk/news/health/covid-19-vaccine-jab-hesitancy-is-waning-as-the-rollout-continues-say-scientists-927307

https://www.npr.org/2021/04/26/988165812/how-a-u-k-imam-countered-vaccine-hesitancy-and-helped-thousands-get-the-jab?t=1620729315964

https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n837

https://www.pulsetoday.co.uk/news/clinical-areas/immunology-and-vaccines/book-covid-jab-before-supply-dries-up-nhse-tells-eligible-patients/

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-04-21/covid-vaccines-gen-z-and-millennials-are-the-next-challenge-for-u-s-and-u-k

https://www.gponline.com/gps-urged-repeat-covid-19-vaccine-offers-study-shows-fall-hesitancy/article/1710748

https://www.newstatesman.com/science-tech/coronavirus/2021/04/why-has-covid-19-vaccine-had-such-high-uptake-uk

Contract tracing apps used to reduce the spread of COVID-19 are unlikely to be effective without proper uptake and supported by concurrent control measures, finds a new study led by the UCL Virus Watch team.

The systematic review*, published in Lancet Digital Health, found 15 relevant articles by reviewing more than 4,000 articles of automated and partially-automated contact tracing, and analysed these to understand the potential impact these tools could have in controlling the COVID-19 pandemic.

Researchers conclude the evidence around the effectiveness of automated contact tracing systems is currently very limited, and large-scale manual contact tracing alongside other public health control measures is likely to be required in conjunction with automated approaches.

Dr Robert Aldridge (UCL Institute of Health Informatics) from the Virus Watch Study team said: “We currently do not have good evidence about whether a notification from a smartphone app is as effective in breaking chains of transmission by giving advice to isolate due to contact with a case of COVID-19 when compared to advice provided by a public health contact tracer. We urgently need to study this evidence gap and examine how automated approaches can be integrated with existing contact tracing and disease control strategies, and generate evidence on whether these new digital approaches are cost-effective and equitable.”

Dr Isobel Braithwaite (UCL Institute of Health Informatics) said: “Across a number of modelling studies, we found a consistent picture that although automated contact tracing could support manual contact tracing, the systems will require large-scale uptake by the population and strict adherence to quarantine advice by contacts notified to have a significant impact on reducing transmission.”

This new research was covered by the Financial Times (£), Telegraph (£), Independent, Mail Online, Metro, Express, Yahoo! News.

*A systematic review carefully identifies all the relevant published and unpublished studies, rates them for quality and synthesises the studies’ findings across the studies identified.

The Independent published a news story today looking at whether a heatwave will slow down COVID-19 or not. In the article they discussed data from a research study published by members of the Virus Watch study team in March.

Using historical data from The Flu Watch study, the research team found that levels of infection from three common coronaviruses appear to have followed a seasonal pattern in England, with peaks occurring during winter and broadly at the same time as influenza. The team also found that only small amounts of coronavirus were transmitted in the summer.

First author Dr Rob Aldridge said, “Our findings support the idea that in the UK we could see continued but lower levels of coronavirus transmission in the summer, but this may reverse in the winter if there is still a large susceptible population at that point,” said lead author Rob Aldridge.

“However, given this is a novel virus, we don’t know if this seasonal pattern will hold over the summer due to high levels of susceptibility in the population.”

You can read the full research article here and also the news item in The Independent here.

This illustration, created at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), reveals ultrastructural morphology exhibited by coronaviruses. Source: CDC Public Health Image Library, Credit: Alissa Eckert, MS; Dan Higgins, MAMS

Dr Robert Aldridge will lead a new Virus Watch study that aims to better understand the impact of COVID-19 on minority ethnic and migrant groups and how to tackle it in community settings. This funding will enable Virus Watch to recruit approximately 12,000 people from minority ethnic and migrant groups.

The new research project will also separately utilise the Million Migrant Cohort study of healthcare and mortality outcomes in non-EU migrants and refugees to England since 2015. In collaboration with Public Health England, they will link this with data on COVID-19 diagnosis and hospitalization to determine how often these groups are diagnosed, hospitalised and die with COVID-19 and how this is affected by their socioeconomic situation and pre-existing health conditions.

You can read more about the newly funded study and others that were also awarded funding here.

UCL has launched Virus Watch, inviting 50,000 households to take part in one of the largest and most comprehensive studies of COVID-19 in the UK.

The study, which will require participants to complete regular online symptom surveys, seeks to better understand community spread of the virus.

Find out more about this news story here.

Image credit – Trinity Care Foundation, Source: Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Invitations are being posted to 85,000 households for the world’s most comprehensive study of Covid-19, as researchers begin recruiting more than 40,000 households from all ethnic backgrounds for a neighbourhood “virus watch”.

Read more about the news coverage in the i newspaper

UCL has launched Virus Watch, inviting 42,500 people to take part in one of the largest and most comprehensive studies of Covid-19 in the UK to study the next phase of the pandemic.

Read the full UCL news item about the launch of Virus Watch.

Electron microscopic image of COVID-19 on the Public Health Image Library  Credit: Hannah A Bullock; Azaibi Tamin