Perception of emergent epidemic of COVID-2019 / SARS CoV-2 on the Polish Internet

Andrzej Jarynowski; Monika Wojta-Kempa; Vitaly Belik

Although a large part of the Polish population has heard about coronaviruses for the first time a few weeks ago, in reality they face less dangerous coronaviruses causing simple cold all the time. Only the emergence of a novel strain from Wuhan gave the word "Coronavirus" a new meaning. Before disease introduction, less than a half of surveyed Poles believed that corona virus is the most important topic in the second half of February 2020 (IBRIS [1] ). The disease was not detected in Poland until 03.03.2020, but this topic was relatively important already before introduction and started to drive media and social life after the disease introduction. During opinion poll performed on 09.03.2020 and 10.03.2020, 63% of respondents reported, that this is a serious threat for Poland, 40% that this is a serious threat for their family and 73% that this is a serious threat for the Polish Economy ( [2] ). We observe several small peaks of interest on the Internet for Coronavirus in Poland during investigated period (since January 2020 till 11.03.2020), although the largest surge in interest occurs after the official confirmation of the virus introduction to Poland on 04.03.2020 . The last day of analysis 11.03.2020 was a day of pandemic declaration by WHO.