Abstract
Background
The COVID-19 pandemic caused profound socioeconomic disruption in addition to claiming millions of lives worldwide. Beyond the infection-related mortality, a chronic and morbid condition known as “Long-COVID” is now getting increasing attention. Scholars and clinicians around the world are still trying to ascertain which COVID-19 variants could be linked with long-COVID mostly from clinic or healthcare facility-based studies.
Methods
We conducted a nationwide assessment in the U.S. using an infodemiological analysis to explore COVID-19 variants potentially linked with long-COVID. Long-COVID search-related data were collected from Google Trends from January 1st, 2020 to January 10th, 2023 (the peak phase of the pandemic in the U.S.). Variants prevalent in this period were analyzed in relation to the searches on long-COVID.
Results
A total of 2.2 million x 107 online searches for long-COVID were observed during the analytic period. The highest average searches recorded were during the Omicron variant surge followed by the surge of the Alpha variant. Given these findings and reports from clinical studies, Delta or original/wild variants are most likely associated with the occurrence of long-COVID symptoms among the U.S population.
Conclusions
Delta or original wild variants may have the highest tendency to cause long-COVID symptoms in the general public. Additional population-based surveillance studies are needed to validate infodemiology methods on Long-COVID prevalence and occurrence.
Keywords:
Long-COVID, surveillance, infodemiology, information seeking behavior, search enginesReferences
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2024). CDC Museum Covid-19 Timeline. Available at: https://www.cdc.gov/museum/timeline/covid19.html. Accessed on 18 July 2024.
Maarefvand M, Hosseinzadeh S, Farmani O, et. al. Coronavirus outbreak and stress in Iranians. International journal of environmental research and public health. 2020;17(12):4441.
World Health Organization. WHO COVID-19 Dashboard. 2024. Available at: https://data.who.int/dashboards/covid19/deaths?n=o. Accessed on 18 July 2024.
Khubchandani J, Sharma S, Webb FJ, Wiblishauser MJ, et. al. Covid-19 infection among family and friends: the psychological impact on non-infected persons. Brain Sciences. 2022;12(9):1123.
Cintron SA, Hitchcock S, Shen Q, Kasuske L, Yang FM, Pierce J. Symptom science and post-COVID-19 conditions. Journal of Medicine, Surgery, and Public Health. 2024;2:100092.
Bhagavathula AS, Massey PM, Khubchandani J. COVID-19 testing demand amidst Omicron variant surge: Mass hysteria or population health need? Brain, Behavior, and Immunity. 2022;101:394.
Murmu N, Sarkar M, Dey S, Manna R, Roy S, Mondal T, Halder S, Bhattacharjee N, Dash SK, Giri B. Efficacy and limitations of repurposed drugs and vaccines for COVID-19. Journal of Medicine, Surgery, and Public Health. 2023:100041.
Andre M, Lau LS, Pokharel MD, Ramelow J, Owens F, Souchak J, Akkaoui J, Ales E, Brown H, Shil R, Nazaire V. From alpha to omicron: how different variants of concern of the SARS-Coronavirus-2 impacted the world. Biology. 2023;12(9):1267.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. COVID Data Tracker.2024. Available at: https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#variant-proportions. Accessed on 18 July 2024.
Tabatabai M, Juarez PD, Matthews-Juarez P, Wilus DM, Ramesh A, Alcendor DJ, Tabatabai N, Singh KP. An analysis of COVID-19 mortality during the dominancy of alpha, delta, and omicron in the USA. Journal of Primary Care & Community Health. 2023;14:21501319231170164.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Long COVID Basics. 2024. Available at: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/long-term-effects/index.html. Accessed on 18 July 2024.
World Health Organization. Post COVID-19 condition (Long COVID). 2022. Available at: https://www.who.int/europe/news-room/fact-sheets/item/post-covid-19-condition. Accessed on 18 July 2024.
Aiyegbusi OL, Hughes SE, Turner G, Rivera SC, McMullan C, Chandan JS, Haroon S, Price G, Davies EH, Nirantharakumar K, Sapey E. Symptoms, complications and management of long COVID: a review. Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine. 2021;114(9):428-42.
Lai YJ, Liu SH, Manachevakul S, Lee TA, Kuo CT, Bello D. Biomarkers in long COVID-19: A systematic review. Frontiers in medicine. 2023;10:1085988.
Spinicci M, Graziani L, Tilli M, Nkurunziza J, Vellere I, Borchi B, Mencarini J, Campolmi I, Gori L, Giovannoni L, Amato C. Infection with SARS-CoV-2 variants is associated with different long COVID phenotypes. Viruses. 2022;14(11):2367.
Hernández-Aceituno A, García-Hernández A, Larumbe-Zabala E. COVID-19 long-term sequelae: Omicron versus Alpha and Delta variants. Infectious Diseases Now. 2023;53(5):104688.
Padilla S, Ledesma C, García-Abellán J, García JA, Fernández-González M, de la Rica A, Galiana A, Gutiérrez F, Masiá M. Long COVID across SARS-CoV-2 variants, lineages, and sublineages. Iscience. 2024;27(4).
Amorim CE, Cazetta GS, Cristelli MP, Requião-Moura LR, da Silva ER, Vale LP, Brito MD, Bronzo T, Nakamura MR, Tedesco-Silva H, Medina-Pestana J. Long COVID Among Kidney Transplant Recipients Appears to Be Attenuated During the Omicron Predominance. Transplantation. 2024;108(4):963-9.
Raubenheimer JE. A practical algorithm for extracting multiple data samples from Google trends extended for health. American Journal of Epidemiology. 2022;191(9):1666-9.
Khubchandani J, Aldhaleei W, Bhagavathula AS. Monkeypox outbreaks, international health emergency declaration, and Americans' interest in preventing the disease. Journal of Medical Virology. 2023;95(1).
Neumann K, Mason SM, Farkas K, Santaularia NJ, Ahern J, Riddell CA. Harnessing Google health trends data for epidemiologic research. American journal of epidemiology. 2023;192(3):430-7.
Zepecki A, Guendelman S, DeNero J, Prata N. Using application programming interfaces to access Google data for health research: Protocol for a methodological framework. JMIR research protocols. 2020;9(7):e16543.
Bhagavathula AS, Khubchandani J. Monkeypox outbreaks and global health emergency declaration: Can such declarations influence public interest in the disease? Brain, Behavior, and Immunity. 2022;106:113.
Fernández-de-Las-Peñas C, Cancela-Cilleruelo I, Rodríguez-Jiménez J, Gómez-Mayordomo V, Pellicer-Valero OJ, Martín-Guerrero JD, Hernández-Barrera V, Arendt-Nielsen L, Torres-Macho J. Associated-onset symptoms and post-COVID-19 symptoms in hospitalized COVID-19 survivors infected with Wuhan, Alpha or Delta SARS-CoV-2 variant. Pathogens. 2022;11(7):725.
Diexer S, Klee B, Gottschick C, Xu C, Broda A, Purschke O, Binder M, Frese T, Girndt M, Hoell JI, Moor I. Association between virus variants, vaccination, previous infections, and post-COVID-19 risk. International Journal of Infectious Diseases. 2023;136:14-21.
Antonelli M, Pujol JC, Spector TD, Ourselin S, Steves CJ. Risk of long COVID associated with delta versus omicron variants of SARS-CoV-2. The Lancet. 2022;399(10343):2263-4.
Morioka S, Tsuzuki S, Suzuki M, Terada M, Akashi M, Osanai Y, Kuge C, Sanada M, Tanaka K, Maruki T, Takahashi K. Post COVID-19 condition of the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2. Journal of Infection and Chemotherapy. 2022;28(11):1546-51.
Azzolini E, Levi R, Sarti R, Pozzi C, Mollura M, Mantovani A, Rescigno M. Association between BNT162b2 vaccination and long COVID after infections not requiring hospitalization in health care workers. Jama. 2022;328(7):676-8.
Du M, Ma Y, Deng J, Liu M, Liu J. Comparison of long COVID-19 caused by different SARS-CoV-2 strains: a systematic review and meta-analysis. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. 2022;19(23):16010.
Buonsenso D, Morello R, Mariani F, De Rose C, Mastrantoni L, Zampino G, Valentini P. Risk of long Covid in children infected with Omicron or pre‐Omicron SARS‐CoV‐2 variants. Acta Paediatrica. 2023;112(6).
Fernández-de-Las-Peñas C, Notarte KI, Peligro PJ, Velasco JV, Ocampo MJ, Henry BM, Arendt-Nielsen L, Torres-Macho J, Plaza-Manzano G. Long-COVID symptoms in individuals infected with different SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern: a systematic review of the literature. Viruses. 2022;14(12):2629.
Bhagavathulaa AS, Massey P, Khubchandani J. Monkeypox outbreak and global public interest in the disease. The Journal of Hospital Infection. 2022;129:110.
Mavragani A. Tracking COVID-19 in Europe: infodemiology approach. JMIR public health and surveillance. 2020;6(2):e18941.
How to Cite
License
Copyright (c) 2024 Akshaya Bhagavathula, Jagdish Khubchandani, Elizabeth England-Kennedy, Ayana Pai, Sushil Sharma
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Copyright© by the author(s). Published by the Evidence Journals. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited.
Most read articles by the same author(s)
- Meenu Singh, Joseph L. Mathew, Ranjit Sah, Celso Augusto Guimarães Santos, Adnan Kisa, Alfonso J. Rodríguez-Morales, Ashish Joshi, Jagdish Khubchandani, Jugal Kishore, Roy Rillera Marzo, Atin Adhikari, Abdulai Abubakari, Aditya Singh, Ahmad Neyazi, Aroop Mohanty, Russell Kabir, Vasso Apostolopoulos, Abhishek Mewara, Aravind P Gandhi, Bijaya K Padhi, Navigating the future of academic publishing: mission and vision of "The Evidence" , The Evidence: Vol. 1 No. 1 (2023): OCT - DEC
- Fern J. Webb, Kavita Batra, Jagdish Khubchandani, Srikanta Banerjee, Joyce Balls-Berry, Acculturation, readiness to change, and body mass index among African American women: a community-based study from Florida, United States , The Evidence: Vol. 2 No. 2 (2024): APR - JUN
