Feline Infectious Peritonitis and Feline Coronavirus Interest During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Google Trends Analysis

Abstract

Coronaviruses infecteddifferent species of animals, such as feline, canine, swine and bovine. Inveterinary medicine, a significant fatal coronavirus disease in Felidae is FelineInfectious Peritonitis (FIP). The Internet provided many websites about smallanimals that present educational content for disease prevention, pets welfare,etc. Upper than 90% of internet users chooses Google as a search engine. In2008, Google Company launched Google Insights for search that displaying searchtrends data. Finally, this company merged Google Insights for Search intoGoogle Trends (GT).We conducted a Google Trends analysis to evaluate searchinterest in FIP and feline coronavirus in the COVID-19 pandemic. For thispurpose, we search two topics, "Feline infectious peritonitis" and"Feline coronavirus” in GT, for collecting data. The duration of study wasselected in two periods: January-November 2020, the COVID-19 period and thesame period in 2019 for comparison. Comparison of the RSV means between thesetwo periods was performed using two independent samples t-test with assumingunequal variances and two-sided p-value <0.05 considered statisticallysignificant. The RSV of "Feline infectious peritonitis" and"Feline coronavirus" topics have significantly increased during theCOVID-19 period comparing with the same period in 2019 (p-value<0.05). After the COVID-19 pandemic onset,all aspects of our lives were affected by pandemic consequent problems. Thisglobal attention to COVID-19 has made a valuable opportunity for presenting theimportance of corona viral diseases in any species. The increase of interest insearching about Feline infectious peritonitis and Feline coronavirus indicatedthat continued global concerns were raised about this infection in felines. Theresults of this study can be useful for animal health policymakers,veterinarians and journalists to help reduce concerns about FIP and Felinecoronavirus by providing educational content on the Internet.