Alliance for Pandemic Preparedness

September 11, 2020

Association of Public Interest in Preventative Measures and Increased COVID-19 Cases after Expiration of Stay-at-Home Orders: A Cross-Sectional Study

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• Higher proportions of Google searches for COVID-19 preventive measures were associated at the state level with longer Stay-at-Home orders and fewer COVID-19 cases after the Stay-at-Home orders expired (r=-0.33) and higher case-fatality rates (r=0.60). A moderate to strong negative correlation was found between states’ percentage of voters supporting the Republican nominee in 2016 and the proportion of queries for preventative measures (r = -0.77). The proportion of queries for preventive measures were collected from Google Trends for the topics “hand sanitizer,” “social distancing,” “COVID testing,” and “contact tracing,” for each state.

Hartwell et al. (Sept 10, 2020). Association of Public Interest in Preventative Measures and Increased COVID-19 Cases after Expiration of Stay-at-Home Orders: A Cross-Sectional Study. Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness. https://doi.org/10.1017/dmp.2020.333