Twitter monitoring evidence of Covid-19 infodemic in Italy

Abstract Background Risk communication is essential for risk management, especially during alarming events, in order to create a balanced risk perception. The tweets follow up can be useful to timely evidence “media storms” or “infodemics” thus suggesting corrective interventions. The spread of Covid-19 has been the occasion to observe the evolution of tweets about this topic, with the aim of evidence peaks of fear Methods On 30th January 2020 we started a large collection of Italian and English tweets containing the following keywords: “coronavirus”, “2019-nCov”, “CoronavirusOutbreak”, “CoronavirusWho”, “WuhanCoronavirus”, “coronaviruschina”, “coronavirusitalia”, “virus cina”, “virus cinese”, “virus mascherine”, “virus paura”, “virus polmonite” and “virus vaccine”. “Covid-19” and “SARS-CoV-2” were added later. For the data collection Twitter Streaming API was used. Results The total number of tweets collected till 26th February was approximately 20M, 2M in Italian and 18M in English. The trend of the volume of tweets gathered shows a first small peak between Jan 30th and Feb 1st, but a second, higher, peak is visible after the 21st February, following the report of the Covid-19 clusters in Italy. Italian tweets account for 6% of the first peak and for 22% of the second. The Italian word “paura” firstly appeared on Feb 5th, with a peak after Feb 21th. Conclusions ”infodemics” or “media storms”, are situations of uncontrolled diffusion of news and opinion, frequently leading to irrational and counterproductive behaviors. The Italian evolution of tweets indicate since the first day of cluster report, a clear escalation of fear, that suggests timely corrective actions to facilitate the disease control. Key messages With the twitter monitoring we demonstrate that since 21th February an infodemic is spreading in Italy. The twitter follow up can be used to timely evidence a public alarm, motivate corrective interventions and. evaluate the efficacy of them.


Results:
The total number of tweets collected till 26th February was approximately 20M, 2M in Italian and 18M in English. The trend of the volume of tweets gathered shows a first small peak between Jan 30th and Feb 1st, but a second, higher, peak is visible after the 21st February, following the report of the Covid-19 clusters in Italy. Italian tweets account for 6% of the first peak and for 22% of the second. The Italian word ''paura'' firstly appeared on Feb 5th, with a peak after Feb 21th. Conclusions: ''infodemics'' or ''media storms'', are situations of uncontrolled diffusion of news and opinion, frequently leading to irrational and counterproductive behaviors. The Italian evolution of tweets indicate since the first day of cluster report, a clear escalation of fear, that suggests timely corrective actions to facilitate the disease control. Key messages: With the twitter monitoring we demonstrate that since 21th February an infodemic is spreading in Italy. The twitter follow up can be used to timely evidence a public alarm, motivate corrective interventions and. evaluate the efficacy of them.

Background:
In January/2020 the respiratory disease caused by the new coronavirus was declared as an international public health emergency. In Brazil, until June 22nd there were 1,11 million confirmed cases. In this context, the Telehealth Network of Minas Gerais (TNMG), a large-scale public telehealth service, acted quickly to assist professionals and the population in coping with the disease, mainly in low resource settings.

Aim:
To report the experience of a Brazilian public telehealth service in actions to manage COVID-19 and its impacts. Methods: Experience report.

Results:
The TNMG developed 15 infographics and 16 web lectures for health professionals and general population about key themes, such as respiratory syndromes, personal care and ventilatory support. Two of them were live, seen in real time by 13,422 professionals, mainly nurses (63.8%) and doctors (31.1%), from 45 medical specialties (most family physicians-34.0%), in all Brazilian states, especially the Southeast region (58.5%). All lectures were uploaded on TNMG's Youtube channel, each one reaching 5,300 viewers on average. Specific to support health professionals: 2 guidelines were developed -one for primary care units and other to emergency/intensive care; a category for offline (second opinion) teleconsultations was created for doubts about coronavirus; and a list with 39 Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) was developed. For the general population: 65 FAQs were developed; a health team from a low resource setting was trained to provide online teleconsultations; and a chatbot was released to automatically answer COVID-19 related doubts and/or evaluate a user's health condition, indicating if emergency medical care was needed. All resources are freely available on TNMG's website and on its social networks.

Conclusions:
Telehealth tools had a notable acceptance and were shown to be an effective way to disseminate information for professionals and lay population throughout the country. Key messages: Telehealth tools have been proven to be an effective strategy to promote health education, for both professionals and the general population. Telemedicine plays a fundamental role on dealing with public health issues, especially on low resource settings. Telehealth has been useful to the COVID-19 outbreak but efforts to better describe cases and evaluate impact on the public health response should be promoted. National and international health authorities should be aware of the opportunities offered by telehealth during outbreaks, and may consider its integration in public health emergencies preparedness plans. Key messages: Telehealth was useful for the public health response to COVID19 outbreak. Telehealth should be integrated into public health preparedness plans.