PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Heidi Abbas
AU  - Mohamed Mostafa Tahoun
AU  - Ahmed Taha Aboushady
AU  - Abdelrahman Khalifa
AU  - Aura Corpuz
AU  - Pierre Nabeth
TI  - Usage of social media in epidemic intelligence activities in the WHO, Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean
AID  - 10.1136/bmjgh-2022-008759
DP  - 2022 Jul 01
TA  - BMJ Global Health
PG  - e008759
VI  - 7
IP  - Suppl 4
4099  - http://gh.bmj.com/content/7/Suppl_4/e008759.short
4100  - http://gh.bmj.com/content/7/Suppl_4/e008759.full
SO  - BMJ Global Health2022 Jul 01; 7
AB  - Social media platforms are a massive source of information being used for monitoring and detecting various actual events such as natural disasters and disease outbreaks. This paper aims to present the experience of WHO, Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean in using social media for the detection and monitoring of COVD-19 pandemic alongside the other event-based surveillance tools. Over the period of 29 January 2020 to 31 May 2021, information was collected from social media and other media outlets (web news) as being the source of health information for early detecting and monitoring the situation of COVID-19 events. Signals were categorised into new events and event updates; where event updates captured from social media were categorised into official and unofficial. A total of 10 160 COVID-19 information were captured, out of which 95.8% (n=9732) were detected through social media. None of the information captured were discarded. 50.0% (n=11) of the COVID-19 events in the Eastern Mediterranean Region (EMR) were primarily captured from social media compared with 4.5% (n=1) primarily captured from other media outlets. Almost all (99.4%) of the event updates captured from social media were official updates. Real-time, transparent and relevant information posted on different social media platforms, especially the governmental official social media accounts, strengthened the early detection and follow-up of public health events in the EMR, especially during the current COVID-19 pandemic.Data are available in a public, open access repository. Data are public and available on Twitter and Facebook.