The Global Interest in Vaccines and Its Prediction and Perspectives in the Era of COVID-19. Real-Time Surveillance Using Google Trends

Magdalena Sycinska-Dziarnowska, Iwona Paradowska-Stankiewicz and Krzysztof Woźniak
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Magdalena Sycinska-Dziarnowska: Department of Orthodontics, Pomeranian Medical University in Szczecin, Powstańców Wielkopolskich Street 72, 70111 Szczecin, Poland
Iwona Paradowska-Stankiewicz: Department of Epidemiology of Infectious Diseases and Surveillance, National Institute of Public Health—National Institute of Hygiene, 00791 Warsaw, Poland
Krzysztof Woźniak: Department of Orthodontics, Pomeranian Medical University in Szczecin, Powstańców Wielkopolskich Street 72, 70111 Szczecin, Poland

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 18, issue 15, 1-11

Abstract: Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has globally overwhelmed all sectors of life. The fast development of vaccines against COVID-19 has had a significant impact on the course of the pandemic. Methods: Global data from Google Trends was analyzed for vaccines against flu, BCG, HPV, pneumococcal disease, polio, and COVID-19. The time frame includes the last five-year period starting from 17 April 2016. Multiple training of time series models with back testing, including Holt–Winters forecasting, Exponential Smoothing State Space, Linear model with trend and seasonal components (tlsm), and ARIMA was conducted. Forecasting according to the best fitting model was performed. Results: Correlation analysis did not reveal a decrease in interest in vaccines during the analyzed period. The prediction models provided a short-term forecast of the dynamics of interest for flu, HPV, pneumococcal and polio vaccines with 5–10% growth in interest for the first quarter of 2022 when compared to the same quarter of 2021. Conclusions: Despite the huge interest in the COVID-19 vaccine, there has not been a detectable decline in the overall interest in the five analyzed vaccines.

Keywords: vaccination programs; COVID-19 vaccine; flu vaccine; BCG vaccine; HPV vaccine; pneumococcal vaccine; Polio vaccine; Google Trends (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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