Objective: This study aims to understand health communication through Google Trends and news coverage and to explore their relationship with the prevention and control of COVID-19 in the early epidemic stage.

Methods: We collected data on COVID-19 news coverage and Google search queries for eight countries (United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Singapore, Ireland, Australia, South Africa, and New Zealand) between January 1, 2020 and April 29, 2020, and depicted the trend of news coverage on COVID-19 over time, as well as search trends on the topics of COVID-19 related diseases, treatments and medical resources, symptoms and signs, and public measures. The characteristics of various trends in different countries were described and analyzed.

Results: Across all search trends in eight countries, search peaks were formed almost between March and April 2020, and declines occurred in April 2020. For treatments and medical resources, the term “mask” formed multiple search peaks. In the topic of symptoms and signs, “fever” and “cough” were the most searched terms. The topic of public measures was the least searched. Besides, when combing the search trends with news coverage, there were mainly three patterns: the American pattern, the Singapore pattern, and the other-countries pattern.

Conclusions: Our findings revealed the level of public concern or neglect for various aspects of COVID-19. As a source of information, news media can influence the search behaviors of the public. Because public concerns varied in different countries and periods, news media can be used to spread more valuable information, and thus achieve more effective health communication. Governments and health care systems can recognize Google Trends as public needs of COVID-19 crisis, and can translate public needs into practices to better control disease. Therefore, news coverage and Google Trends also contribute to the prevention and control of epidemics in the early epidemic stage.