The COVID-19 pandemic in Europe began back in January 2020

Researchers are confident that social networks can help in conducting epidemiological observations. 

It's time

For example, in the spring of 2020, scientists discovered that the first SARS-CoV-2 carriers were hospitalized in Italy at the end of January, a few weeks before the official start of the coronavirus outbreak in the country.Something similar was found by Spanish doctors.

Scientists have studied millions of messages published by people in Europe since 2014. The sample included those posts that contained information about the symptoms of COVID-19.

It turned out that the number of mentions of pneumonia and cough in some European countries rose sharply almost a month before the official start of the epidemic. In previous years, there was nothing like this.

In the future, they will allow us to catch the first signs of the emergence of new diseases and start fighting them before they have had a chance to spread widely. 

Massimo Riccaboni, Professor at the School of Advanced Studies in Lucca

In other European countries - Poland, Spain andBritain, Twitter users began to complain unusually often about problems with their lungs about two weeks before doctors recorded the first outbreaks of COVID-19 in their territory.

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