Using Reports of Symptoms and Diagnoses on Social Media to Predict COVID-19 Case Counts in Mainland China: Observational Infoveillance Study

Cuihua Shen   ^{1 *} , PhD ;   Anfan Chen   ^{2 *} , PhD ;   Chen Luo   ³ , MA ;   Jingwen Zhang   ^{1, 4} , PhD ;   Bo Feng   ¹ , PhD ;   Wang Liao   ¹ , PhD

¹ Department of Communication, University of California, Davis, Davis, CA, United States

² Department of Science Communication and Science Policy, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China

³ School of Journalism and Communication, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

⁴ Department of Public Health Sciences, University of California, Davis, Davis, CA, United States

*these authors contributed equally