It’s a fact: Corona beer has nothing to do with Coronavirus

As new coronavirus outbreak continues to spread, some people seem to think that the deadly outbreak is somehow related to Corona beer. It’s not.

The alcoholic beverage from Mexico showed a surge in Google searches in the past week, along with the term “corona beer virus” and “beer virus.”

In the United States, Google Trends calculated that 57% of the people that searched one of those terms searched for “beer virus,” and the remaining 43% searched for “corona beer virus.”

States like Hawaii, New Mexico and Kansas are searching “beer virus” more, whereas states like South Carolina, Colorado and Arizona are searching “corona beer virus” more.

Google Trends tweeted Tuesday that “coronavirus symptoms” had spiked +1,050% this week. The search engine also included top questions on the coronavirus from the past 24 hours which included “what is coronavirus” and “is coronavirus deadly.”

Google and Constellation Brands did not immediately respond to USA TODAY’s request for comment on the recent search surge.

Chinese authorities confirmed at least 5,500 cases of the coronavirus and 131 people dead from the outbreak.

The epicenter of the outbreak is Wuhan, a city of 11 million people, but during their Tuesday news conference, officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said there were 60 cases in 13 other countries outside of China, including five in the U.S.

Coronaviruses are a large family of viruses that cause illness ranging from the common cold to more severe diseases, from pneumonia to Middle East respiratory syndrome, known as MERS, and severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS.

Common signs of infection include fever, cough, shortness of breath and breathing difficulties. In more severe cases, infection can cause high fever, kidney failure and death.

Contributing: Julia Thompson and Curtis Tate, USA TODAY.

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