Ethiopia, Uganda lead in global searches for coronavirus info: Google

Africa

Ethiopia has the highest coronavirus-related searches, according to data from global search engine giant Google.

Google’s trending section is keeping tabs on how its users are searching for information on the coronavirus pandemic that has been ravaging the world for months.

As of Monday 30th March 2020, Ethiopia was leading in global searches with a value of 100, which represents the peak popularity of a particular search term.

A few days earlier, Uganda’s searches for coronavirus information also peaked at 100. Other African countries featured in Google’s coronavirus search trends include Kenya, South Africa, Ghana and Nigeria.

What are Africans searching for?

Google provides details of searches for a few African countries including Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa. In South Africa coronavirus tips were trending, along with Italy and China as search terms.

Nigerians are searching for symptoms, cures and also interested in what’s happening in China and Italy, a pattern similar to that in Kenya.

Google, like other technology companies is working with first responders to the pandemic including the World Health Organisation (WHO) and different countries’ health ministries.

For every search, Google displays a special Covid-19 alert section that provides credible information on symptoms, prevention, treatment and the latest statistics of the pandemic.

WHO has already declared the massive amounts of coronavirus-related information available on the internet as an infodemic, and users are encouraged to only seek answers from verified sources like health ministries, centers for disease control and international agencies like the World Health Organisation.