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.