Tracking and Analyzing COVID-19 Pandemic Using Twitter and Topic Modelling

COVID-19 left the whole world trapped inside their houses. With a lot of confusion among the general public it was time for researchers to study different aspects of the disease in order to find an effective way out of it. With high infection rates, it was difficult to trace the virus as its transmission was way ahead of what everyone thought. Experts suggested that contact tracing, isolation, and tracking the virus were among the most effective solutions to reduce its spread. In this chapter we will see how we can use Topic Modelling, one of the popular Natural Language Processing techniques to trace and track COVID-19 spread. We will go through topic modelling in brief to get an idea how this technique works. We will also see different research papers/journals that have used topic modelling to analyze COVID or other highly contagious disease.