Article Trends of Online Search of COVID-19 Related Terms in Cyprus Marios Anastasiou 1 , Katerina Pantavou 2 , Anneza Yiallourou 2 , Stefanos Bonovas 3,4 and Georgios K. Nikolopoulos 2, *   Citation: Anastasiou, M.; Pantavou, K.; Yiallourou, A.; Bonovas, S.; Nikolopoulos, G.K. Trends of Online Search of COVID-19 Related Terms in Cyprus. Epidemiologia 2021, 2, 36–45. https://doi.org/10.3390/epidemiologia 2010004 Academic Editor: Ubydul Haque Received: 3 December 2020 Accepted: 15 January 2021 Published: 20 January 2021 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affil- iations. Copyright: © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). 1 Independent Scholar, Nicosia 2740, Cyprus; anastasioumariosam@gmail.com 2 Medical School, University of Cyprus, Nicosia 2029, Cyprus; pantavou.katerina@ucy.ac.cy (K.P.); yiallourou.anneza@ucy.ac.cy (A.Y.) 3 Department of Biomedical Sciences, Humanitas University, 20090 Milan, Italy; stefanos.bonovas@hunimed.eu 4 Humanitas Clinical and Research Center-IRCCS, 20089 Milan, Italy * Correspondence: nikolopoulos.georgios@ucy.ac.cy; Tel.: +357-2289-5223 Abstract: Knowledge of trends in web searches provides useful information for various purposes, including responses to public health emergencies. This work aims to analyze the popularity of internet search queries for Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) and COVID-19 symptoms in Cyprus. Query data for the term Coronavirus were retrieved from Google Trends website between 19 January and 30 June 2020. The study focused on Cyprus and the four most populated cities: Nicosia, Limassol, Larnaca, and Paphos. COVID-19 symptoms including fever, cough, sore throat, shortness of breath, and myalgia were considered in the analysis. Daily and weekly search volumes were described, and their correlation with the evolution of the COVID-19 pandemic and important announcements or events were examined. Three periods of interest peaks were identified in Cyprus. The highest interest in COVID-19-related terms was found in the city of Paphos. The most popular symptoms were fever and cough, and the symptom with the highest increase in popularity was myalgia. At the beginning of the pandemic, the search volume of COVID-19 grew substantially when governments, major organizations, and high-profile figures, globally and locally, made important announcements regarding COVID-19. Health authorities in Cyprus and elsewhere could benefit from constantly monitoring the online interest of the population in order to get timely information that could be used in public health planning and response. Keywords: COVID-19; pandemic; google trends; search interest; information seeking; internet be- havior 1. Introduction Knowing what is popular among the public can help health authorities monitor information spread that could be associated with disease transmission, progression, and control. Google Trends (GT) is a very popular, free online tool that provides information on public interest in various topics [1]. Several studies [1–4] have focused on public interest using data from GT and found a relationship between GT and health data, including those on Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19). For instance, Liu et al. [2] analyzed the United States (US) audience’s GT data and showed that when high profile figures endorsed the therapeutic use of chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19, the relative search queries for buying these products increased. Another research group [4] studied GT data until late February 2020 from US, United Kingdom (UK), Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and Ireland showing that the peak of interest in COVID-19 was on 31 January 2020 in all countries. However, the speed of interest growth, the response time, and the duration of public attention differed across them. The aim of this work was to examine the online interest of Cypriots in COVID-19 and its symptoms during the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic. The methods and results could be used in serious infectious disease outbreaks and other public health crises Epidemiologia 2021, 2, 36–45. https://doi.org/10.3390/epidemiologia2010004 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/epidemiologia