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

Coronaviruses infected different species of animals, such as feline, canine, swine and bovine. In veterinary medicine, a significant fatal coronavirus disease in Felidae is Feline Infectious Peritonitis (FIP). The Internet provided many websites about small animals that present educational content for disease prevention, pets welfare, etc. Upper than 90% of internet users chooses Google as a search engine. In 2008, Google Company launched Google Insights for search that displaying search trends data. Finally, this company merged Google Insights for Search into Google Trends (GT).We conducted a Google Trends analysis to evaluate search interest in FIP and feline coronavirus in the COVID-19 pandemic. For this purpose, we search two topics, "Feline infectious peritonitis" and "Feline coronavirus” in GT, for collecting data. The duration of study was selected in two periods: January-November 2020, the COVID-19 period and the same period in 2019 for comparison. Comparison of the RSV means between these two periods was performed using two independent samples t-test with assuming unequal variances and two-sided p-value <0.05 considered statistically significant. The RSV of "Feline infectious peritonitis" and "Feline coronavirus" topics have significantly increased during the COVID-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. This global attention to COVID-19 has made a valuable opportunity for presenting the importance of corona viral diseases in any species. The increase of interest in searching about Feline infectious peritonitis and Feline coronavirus indicated that continued global concerns were raised about this infection in felines. The results of this study can be useful for animal health policymakers, veterinarians and journalists to help reduce concerns about FIP and Feline coronavirus by providing educational content on the Internet. © 2021 Mohammad Jokar, Vahid Rahmanian, Nader Sharifi, Narges Rahmanian and Hekmatollah Khoubfekr.