Google Trends search and the coronavirus contagion

Abstract

Since December 2019, the world has been facing the advance of coronavirus. As of early April, over two million people have been infected and almost 80 thousand died.As we are dealing with a pandemic, it is expected that people seek information on different themes related to the disease. One of the most usual ways to seek information is through the Google search engine. Using time series econometric procedures, the aim of this paper is to analyze the existence of causality between the number of Google searches on the word coronavirus and the number of cases of infected people.The results we found show that the spread of the disease Granger-causes Google searches on coronavirus. On the other hand, Google searches do not impact the number of infected people.