Even before the official announcements, the 'signals' of the spread of the virus in Europe were circulating on Twitter.
This is what a study by the Imt School of Lucca published in Scientific Reports would reveal, based on "the same online discussion, significantly animated by posts on strange pneumonia and dry cough" already in December 2019.
The study - conducted by Massimo Riccaboni of IMT with Michelangelo Puliga of Sant'Anna of Pisa, Pietro Panzarasa, visiting professor of IMT and lecturer at Queen Mary University of London and Milena Lopreite, of the University of Calabria - begins in March 2020 and examines the Twitter posts between 1 December 2019 and 1 March 2020, collecting in a database those that mention the keyword 'pneumonia' monitored in the most spoken languages of the EU: English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Polish and Danish.
From the analysis it was then noted that already in the weeks before the discovery and announcement of the first cases of contagion, something anomalous begins to emerge: "Across Europe, posts show unexpected levels of concern about unusual pneumonia.
Since December 2019, with the exception of Germany, the entire virtual European discussion on pneumonia has intensified to the point of highlighting a significant surplus ", with a diffusion that is concentrated" precisely in the areas where the first outbreaks will then develop ". researchers have built a database containing the keyword 'dry cough', another symptom of covid, obtaining "similar results". Social as sentinels, then? The results of the study, he explains, "would highlight the urgency of an integrated surveillance system digital epidemiology, in which social media could play a strategic role ".