Today's column, the most optimistic content for all three months from the project starts, continues to monitor the dynamics of the number of search queries with the word "sentency". At the heart of these observations - having many empirical confirmations assumption that this search statistics with good accuracy reflects the real dynamics of the epidemic. You can read more about the methodology here.
In the second working week of the year (January 18-24), Yandex recorded 124,000 views of the search results for requests with the word "smell". It is 26% less than a week ago.
On this figure - minus 26% - I want to stop more, because it is a new record of the speed of reducing the number of requests. In 2020 there were weeks with particularly favorable dynamics, when the number of requests decreased by 11-13% in seven days - such weeks were in the second half of June, in mid-July, then in mid-November. But in the new 2021, we have already received three confirmations that the number of requests, and with it, presumably and the number of new cases of the disease can be reduced at a speed of more than 20% per week. At first there was a decline on the New Year week by 24% at once (such a big one partly became due to the short-term failure on December 31 and January 1 - it seems that these are the only days in a year, when people are less likely to be ready to notice problems with the sense of sense and look for information about this Internet), then on the first working week (January 11-17) - minus 22%. And on the second work week - a record - 26%.
124,000 shows for January 18-24 is the minimum value for the 19th last weeks, the last time the comparable number of requests was in the third week of September, in fact, at the very beginning of autumn waves. And for the first time in 18 weeks, the number of requests for the smell fell below the spring-year-old maximum (Mae had three weeks in a row from 135,000-136,000 posts per week).
Reducing the number of requests continues now. Statistics WordStat.yandex.ru for the last week January (January 25-31) will be published, probably, only on Wednesday, but on incomplete preliminary data it can be expected that the decline in the number of requests for the smell will be relatively 10-15% (although it can Being closer to 5%, and maybe closer to 20%).
If you look at the data on frequency of requests by region, then two fairly clear geographical zones are visible. In the Urals (with the exception of the Sverdlovsk and Kurgan regions), in Siberia, as well as in the largest population regions of the Far East regions of the sense of smelling, there is quite a little - the frequency of such requests is even lower than it was (on average in Russia) in mid-August, That is, in the most quiet period.
At the same time, in the south (with the exception of most national republics), in Central Russia and especially in the North-West, the frequency of requests is still exceeded by the average Russian Federation (and on average, exceeds the median level of the Urals and Siberian regions). From a fairly clear division, except that the Volga region - the statistics of search queries of Udmurtia, Tatarstan, Chuvashia, Orenburgia is more like the indicators of the eastern part of Russia, and the rest of the Macroregion (especially Mordovia, Nizhny Novgorod, Kirov, Penza and Samara region) in this sense more like a central Russia.
In conclusion, I would like to emphasize that requests about the smell and his loss it becomes less not because the awareness of people about anosmia as a symptom of coronavirus is growing. A very similar dynamics show other queries related to coronavirus and its treatment: "taste disappeared," "CT lungs", "Coronavirus treatment". All three requests for the third week of January 3.1-3.3 times lower than the peak values of the second half of October (for the "smell" of the amplitude of the recession slightly more - 4.0 times). Similarly, the number of requests for "saturation" - but only with the lag for two weeks. Such a friendly reduction of frequency for heterogeneous queries associated with coronavirus may be due to only one - a decrease in real incidence. However, how long it will last - is still unknown.
When preparing the material used Yandex Wordstat and Yandex Datalens services