Introduction
After the first cases of coronavirus disease occurred in 2019 (COVID-19) in Wuhan, the capital city of Hubei Province, China, the pandemic has marched relentlessly worldwide. There have been 575,444 confirmed cases worldwide in 202 countries, areas and territories according to the World Health Organization associated with 26,654 deaths; 1155 of these cases are and 102 of the deaths are in the Indonesia (as of March 29, 2020) (World Health Organization, 2020b).
According to the current evidence, COVID-19 viruses appear primarily transmitted between people through respiratory droplets and contact routes (Liu et al., 2020). In addition, the transmission of the COVID-19 virus can occur by direct contact with infected people and indirect contact with surfaces in the immediate environment or with objects used on the infected person. Health authorities such as the World Health Organization and public health expert worldwide recommend strategies to prevent the transmission mechanisms that are acceptable in a variety of community settings worldwide. The recommendations include: respiratory and hand hygiene measures. For respiratory measure, recommendations specifically for individuals with symptoms include covering the mouth while coughing or sneezing to prevent aerosol and droplet transmission, and using disposable tissues and washing hands after contact with respiratory secretions to prevent contact transmission. In addition, the World Health Organization also recommend to wear face mask in public settings recently. In regarding to face masks, there has been misinformation about appropriate use of face masks. Some individuals have assumed that they are protected from COVID-19 by wearing a medical face mask. This practice is not supported by evidence from studies and cause a limiting the availability of face masks for response professionals who need them (Choi, Skrine Jeffers, & Logsdon, 2020).
Frequent hand hygiene is recommended to prevent viral transfer via contact with infected people and surfaces. Hand hygiene can be conducted either using an alcohol-based hand rub if hands are not visibly dirty or soap and water when hands are visibly dirty (World Health Organization, 2020a). While these hygiene practices are widely recommended by health authorities, evaluation of the awareness of such precaution measures in the general population is limited (Hayward, Beale, Johnson, Zambon, & Fragaszy, 2020).
Many information regarding to the precaution measures of COVID-19 are widely available and relatively easy to be accessed in the internet. In line with the internet availability and usage, many information mainly can be accessed easily via Google as the most popular search engine. Google, in particular, provides a web site called Google Trends, that can analyse the popularity of specific search terms. Since Google Trends became available to the public, it has been used to study health-related issues in a variety of topic domain including public awareness (Nuti et al., 2014; Schootman et al., 2015). Public interest in COVID-19 largely reflects people’s awareness and their willingness to take precautionary actions like performing hand hygiene, wearing mask, and social and physical distancing. There are already many studies on COVID-19, however, few focus on the public awareness in this issue particularly in Indonesia. Our research aimed to fill that void. Therefore, we aimed to explore public awareness of COVID-19 and its prevention by the query data retrieved from Google Trends in this research.