An increase in searches for symptoms commonly associated with COVID-19 may help predict emerging hotspots, according to a recent study published in Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology. To determine whether there was a link between an increased volume of online queries for gastrointestinal symptoms linked to the novel coronavirus — vomiting, abdominal pain and diarrhea — as well ageusia, or loss of taste, and a rise in confirmed coronavirus cases, researchers compared data compiled by Google Trends with case incidence information collected by Harvard University.