# Infoveillance of COVID-19 Infections in Dentistry Using Platform X: Descriptive Study

## TL;DR

This study explores how social media data from X (formerly Twitter) can track the impact of COVID-19 on dental professionals and patients during the pandemic.

## Contribution

The study introduces X as a novel infoveillance tool for monitoring dental-related infections and deaths during the pandemic.

## Key findings

- Over 1500 relevant tweets were identified, with most infections reported among dentists in the U.S., India, and Canada.
- Platform X showed potential as an early predictor of disease spread in the dental profession.
- The majority of deaths documented were among dentists, with the U.S., Pakistan, and India reporting the highest numbers.

## Abstract

The 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.

This study aims to investigate the use of X to track COVID-19 infections and deaths associated with dental practices.

English 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.

A 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.

The 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.