Online Public Interest in Cancer During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Health care priorities of individuals may change during a pandemic, which may, in turn, affect health services utilization. We examined Canadians' online relative search interest in five common solid tumors (breast, colon, lung, prostate, and thyroid) during the COVID-19 pandemic to that observed in the same months in the prior 5 years.

We conducted a cross-sectional retrospective study using Google Trends aggregate anonymous online search data from Canada. We compared the respective relative search volumes for breast, colon, lung, prostate, and thyroid cancers for the months March-November 2020 with the mean for the same months in 2015-2019. Welch's two-sample t tests were performed and the raw P values were then adjusted using Benjamini-Hochberg procedure to correct for multiple comparisons. The level of statistical significance was defined by choosing false discovery rate at .05 for the primary analysis.

We observed temporary statistically significant reductions in Canadians' relative search volumes for various cancers, largely early in the pandemic, in the spring of 2020. Specifically, significant reductions (after adjustment for multiple comparisons) were observed for breast cancer in April, May, and October 2020; colon cancer in March and April of 2020; lung cancer in April and September 2020; and prostate cancer in April and May 2020. Thyroid cancer relative search volumes were not significantly different from those observed prior to the pandemic.

Although Canadians' online interest in various cancers temporarily waned early in the COVID-19 pandemic, recent relative search volumes for various cancers are largely not significantly different from prior to the pandemic.