Information in Spanish on the Internet about the Prevention of COVID-19

Abstract

Objective. Our objective was to analyze the evolution of the information in Spanish online about the prevention of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Methods. On 1 March and 13 July 2020, two searches were conducted on Google with the terms “Prevencion COVID-19” and “Prevencion Coronavirus”. In each stage, a univariate analysis was performed to study the association of the authorship and country of origin with the basic recommendations to avoid COVID-19 provided by the World Health Organization (WHO). Results. A total of 120 weblinks were evaluated. The recommendation found most frequently in both stages was “wash your hands frequently” (93.3% in March vs. 90.0% in July). There was a significant increase in the detection of the following recommendations: “avoid touching your face” (56.7% vs. 80.0%) and “stay at home if you feel unwell” (28.3% vs. 63.3%). Weblinks of official public health organizations more frequently provided the advice to “seek medical advice if you develop a fever/cough or have difficulty breathing”. Furthermore, in July, such weblinks provided recommendations to “avoid touching your face” and “maintain a distance of one meter” more frequently than the mass media (OR = 11.5 and 10.5, respectively). In March, the recommendation to “maintain a distance of at least 1 m” was associated with the weblinks from countries with local transmission/imported cases (OR = 8.1). Different/ambiguous information regarding the WHO recommendations was detected in four weblinks. Conclusion. The availability of information in Spanish online on basic prevention measures has improved over time, although there is still room for improvement. It is necessary to promote the use of the websites of official public health organizations among Spanish-speaking users.

COVID-19 Communication From Seven Health Care Institutions in North Texas for English- and Spanish-Speaking Cancer Patients: Mixed Method Website Study

“…We are aware of only one other study that completed a limited examination of equity by noting accessibility of NCI comprehensive cancer centers' visitor policies; it determined that the majority (66%) of the cancer centers published their visitor policies only in English, even in areas of the country with large proportions of Hispanic/Latinx populations [42]. Other studies have inventoried online resources about COVID-19 in Spanish, but these were limited in investigating the educational activities of health care institutions, namely instructional videos [43,44]. Higashi et al JMIR CANCER…”

Infodemic and Fake News in Spain during the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…In response to the avalanche of fake news, the National Police issued a guide to prevent citizens from being manipulated by false information [ 31 , 32 ]; it compiled the main false news that had been disseminated. In this regard, the work of organizations such as Maldito Bulo [ 33 ] and Newtral [ 34 ], which throughout the pandemic have denied false news, is noteworthy.…”

Quality of web-based information about the coronavirus disease 2019: a rapid systematic review of infodemiology studies published during the first year of the pandemic

“…The majority of the studies concluded that websites or videos about COVID-19 had poor quality with quality improvements needed (n = 19) [26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44]. Three studies concluded that websites or videos had moderate or varied quality [45][46][47] and none of the included studies concluded that websites or videos had good or excellent quality with no quality improvements needed.…”

“…There were large variations in the reported prevalence in all of the six identified categories: general information (range = 12-86%) [29,31,35,36,38,43,[45][46][47], prevention (range = 2-95%) [29,31,[34][35][36][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47], risk groups (range = 8-77%) [29,31,35], symptoms (range = 25-98%) [29,31,35,36,38,[45][46][47], testing (range = 5-98%) [29,31,35,36,43,[45][46][47] and treatment (range = 8-97%) [29, 31, 34-36, 38, 41, 42, 45-47] (Fig. 4).…”