Table 1.

The emergent topics and themes in tweets about COVID-19.

Topic	Ten most common words	Theme
Topic 1: Reports on new cases of deadly pneumonia and deaths from the COVID-19 outbreak in China	China, death, first, new, outbreak, pneumonia, reports, spread, toll, Wuhan	Theme 1: The emergency of the COVID-19 pandemic
Topic 2: The epidemic situation and confirmed cases of COVID-19	Cases, going, just, like, nCov, positive, says, tested, tests, US	Theme 2: How to control the COVID-19 pandemic
Topic 3: Public knowledge about COVID-19 from news reports	Outbreak, people, will, news, Wuhan, Chinese, get, knows, disease, can	Theme 3: Reports on the COVID-19 pandemic
Topic 4: The spread of COVID-19 from overseas to the US and how to control the disease	US, Trump, Chinese, cruise, japan, passenger, spread, spreads, ship, CDC	Theme 2: How to control the COVID-19 pandemic
Topic 5: Health concerns and fear as COVID-19 is declared an emergency worldwide	Case, health, now, first, confirmed, China, fear, global, emergency	Theme 1: The emergency of the COVID-19 pandemic
Topic 6: News and information reports on social media about the epidemic	Amp, Wuhan, good, UK, YouTube, second, days, apple, news, article	Theme 3: Reports on the COVID-19 pandemic