Infoveillance of COVID-19 Infections in Dentistry Using Platform X: Descriptive Study
BackgroundThe effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on the well-being of dental professionals and patients has been difficult to track and quantify. X (formerly known as Twitter) proved to be a useful infoveillance tool for tracing the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic worldwide....
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| Main Authors: | , , , , , , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
JMIR Publications
2025-04-01
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| Series: | Journal of Medical Internet Research |
| Online Access: | https://www.jmir.org/2025/1/e54650 |
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| Summary: | BackgroundThe effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on the well-being of dental professionals and patients has been difficult to track and quantify. X (formerly known as Twitter) proved to be a useful infoveillance tool for tracing the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic worldwide.
ObjectiveThis study aims to investigate the use of X to track COVID-19 infections and deaths associated with dental practices.
MethodsEnglish Tweets reporting infections or deaths associated with the dental practice were collected from January 1, 2020, to March 31, 2021. Tweets were searched manually using the X Pro search engine (previously known as TweetDeck [X Corp], Twitter Inc, and TweetDeck Ltd) and automatically using a tweet crawler on the X Academic Research application programming interface. Queries included keywords on infection or death of dental staff and patients caused by COVID-19. Tweets registering events on infection or death of dentists, dental staff, and patients as part of their conversation were included.
ResultsA total of 5641 eligible tweets were retrieved. Of which 1583 (28.1%) were deemed relevant after applying the inclusion and exclusion criteria. Of the relevant tweets, 311 (19.6%) described infections at dental practices, where 1168 (86.9%) infection cases were reported among dentists, 134 (9.9%) dental staff, and 41 (3.1%) patients. The majority of reported infections occurred in the United States, India, and Canada, affecting individuals aged 20-51 years. Among the 600 documented deaths, 253 (42.2%) were dentists, 22 (3.7%) were dental staff, and 7 (1.2%) were patients. The countries with the highest number of deaths were the United States, Pakistan, and India, with an affected age range of 23-83 years.
ConclusionsThe data suggest that analyses of X information in populations of affected areas may provide useful information regarding the impact of a pandemic on the dental profession and demonstrate a correlation with suspected and confirmed infection or death cases. Platform X shows potential as an early predictor for disease spread. However, further research is required to confirm its validity. |
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| ISSN: | 1438-8871 |