Accepted for/Published in: JMIR mHealth and uHealth
Date Submitted: Apr 25, 2020
Open Peer Review Period: Apr 25, 2020 - May 8, 2020
Date Accepted: Sep 13, 2020
Date Submitted to PubMed: Sep 15, 2020
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Using WeChat, a Chinese social media, to early detect the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak in 2019: a retrospective study
ABSTRACT
Background:
A novel virus, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), has started a global pandemic of pneumonia since December 2019, when first cases were reported in Wuhan, China. It has caused 2.7 million confirmed cases and nearly 200,000 deaths as of April 24, 2020. Early warning systems with new technologies should be established to avoid such disasters.
Objective:
This study aimed to early detect the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak in 2019 using social media.
Methods:
WeChat Index is a data service that shows how frequent a specific keyword has appeared in posts, subscriptions, and search over a period of last 90 days on WeChat, the most popular Chinese social media. We plotted daily WeChat Index from Nov 17, 2019 to Feb 14, 2020 for keywords related to the SARS-CoV-2 disease.
Results:
WeChat Index for “Feidian” that is SARS in Chinese language had stayed at low levels until 16 days ahead of the outbreak announcement by the local authority when the index increased significantly. Later, the index persisted at relative high levels and rose rapidly on the day before the announcement. WeChat Index also spiked or increased for keywords “SARS”, “coronavirus”, “novel coronavirus”, “shortness of breath”, “dyspnea”, and “diarrhea”, but not as meaningful as “Feidian” in early detection of the outbreak.
Conclusions:
Using WeChat may detect the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak in 2019 about two weeks earlier than the traditional surveillance systems. WeChat offers a new approach to early detect disease outbreaks.
Citation
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