Coronavirus causes spike in 'Corona beer virus' Google searches

Consumers seem to be associating the deadly coronavirus outbreak with the unrelated beer brand Corona.

Online searches for the Mexican beer have surged on Google in the past week along with the phrase “corona beer virus” and “beer virus,” according to data from Google Trends.

Nearly 60 percent of the people making these queries searched the term “beer virus” while 43 percent searched for “corona beer virus.” Constellation Brands, the owner of Corona, did not immediately return a request for comment.

Google Trends said Tuesday in a tweet that the search term for “coronavirus symptoms” increased by 1,050 percent this week, with “what is coronavirus” and “is coronavirus deadly” among its top searches.

Ticker	Security	Last	Change	Change %
STZ	CONSTELLATION BRANDS INC.	261.73	+0.18	+0.07%

People in Kansas, New Mexico and Hawaii have been searching “beer virus” while those in Arizona, South Carolina and Colorado are researching “corona beer virus.”

The flu-like epidemic includes symptoms such as fever, shortness of breath and cough, according to the CDC.

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There have been more than 6,000 confirmed cases of the coronavirus and 132 deaths from the coronavirus globally, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University Of those, 5,970 are in China. The virus was first detected in Wuhan, China, and has been detected in more than a dozen countries including the U.S., Canada, South Korea, France and Australia. Five cases have been reported in the U.S.

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Coronaviruses cause sickness that can range from a regular cold to more serious diseases such as pneumonia and the Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS).

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Corona beer is not connected to the virus.

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