Mayo Clinic finding COVID-19 hotspots through Google searches

Mayo Clinic also recently introduced an interactive COVID-19 tracking tool that reports the latest data for every county in all 50 states.

That's for everyone to view.

Longer shaping new for you on daybreak.

A new study at mayo clinic will help doctors determine if google search trends can identify covid?

"* 19 hotspots.

Kimt news 3's madelyne watkins spoke with a researcher with the study to see how it works.

She joins us live.

Madelyne... what can you tell us?/// brooke and tyler.

For doctors here at mayo clinic to be able to do this... they first started looking at all of the web searches within a certain area.

Sounds kind of nerve wracking, right?

Well i'm going to break it down for you.

Nats of typing the researchers looked for ten specific terms through google trends.

Words like covid symptoms, sore throat or cough... and all the way to lysol, coronavirus vaccine and covid stimulus check.

Doctor mohamad bydon tells me they discovered those ten terms are strongly correlated with the exposure of hotspots in our area... which essentially allowed them to be able to predict where a hotspot would emerge days before it actually happens.

He says this is a tool the medical field has never been able to use before... so moving forward, it will now be a part of research in future pandemics.

Doctor bydon explains it's something "so you can imagine if we can have predictors that are very early, up to 16 days prior to a hotspot emerging, you can imagine the impact that would have on epidemic or pandemic response on the ability to get ppe to that area, or personal protective equipment.

On the ability to get appropriate testing to that area.

So rather than being reactive to hotspots emerging, this allows us to be a little bit more proactive."

Now to get back to the nerve wracking part ?

"* ?*- google trends automatically generate depending on the number of searches of those keywords.

So they are not tapping into our phones because google trends do not go down to the individual level ?

"*?

"* it goes down to city level.

Live in rochester.

Madelyne watkins kimt thank you madelyne.

Mayo clinic also recently introduced an interactive covid?

"*19 tracking tool that reports the latest data for every county in all 50 states.

That's available