What's Google search got to do with the rise in Covid19 cases in India? Well, its search data has captured India's inquiry of the drug Remdesivir.
As cases of Covid 19 have skyrocketed in the country, the search on Google for Remdesivir an antiviral, too, has swelled.
Searches for Remdesivir were flatlining until 5th April when they began to climb.
On Monday, 5 April, India had reported 1,03,558 new coronavirus cases, taking the tally in the country to 1,25,89,067. The death toll increased by 478 to 1,65,101. Then, it was the biggest one-day rise in cases in the country ever since the pandemic began.
The search peaked from April 5 to April 11, The search peaked from 5th April until 11th April. In that period the interest in search term Remdesivir went up a little over 8 times
While the graph above shows the search interest for the past 90 days, here's how the search for the term for the past 30 days.
The numbers on the Google trends chart represent "search interest". A value of 100 denotes the peak popularity for the term. while 50 means that the search is half as popular. This is relative to the highest point on the chart for the given region - in this case, India, and the time frame.
After dipping for 2 days on April 11 and 12 the searches for Remdesivir soared dramatically -reaching an all time high of as of 19th April 2021.
This interest is mirrored on social media which is flooded with pleas from distressed relatives and friends, desperately seeking Remdesivir for their loved ones.
We also compared searches for Remdesivir with Tocilizumab - another therapy used for combating covid19 infection in hospitalised patients.
While the search for Tocilizumab has grown slightly, the interest is nowhere close to Remdesivir.
But what's interesting is that as the search interest for Tocilizumab and Coronil have grown parallelly.
Search for home remedies like camphor - claims of which are viral on social media as something that helps in increasing the oxygen saturation in the blood are also gaining slowly on Google.
Watch our show on Camphor below: