Background:The current 2019 novel coronavirus outbreak is rapidly evolving. YouTube has been recognized as a popular source of information in previous disease outbreaks. We analysed the content on YouTube about n-CoV in English and Mandarin languages. MethodsYouTube was searched using the terms '2019 novel coronavirus', 'Wuhan virus' and '武汉病毒' (Mandarin for Wuhan virus) on 1 st and 2 nd February 2020. First 50 videos in each group were analyzed. Videos in other languages, duplicate videos, those without an audio and duration >15 mins were excluded .72 videos in English and 42 in Mandarin were reviewed . 2 reviewers classified the videos as useful, misleading or news based on pre specified criterion. Inter-observer agreement was evaluated with kappa coefficient. Modified DISCERN index for reliability and medical information and content index (MICI) score were used for content analysis .Results . These videos attracted cumulative 21,288,856 views. 67% of English and 50 % Mandarin videos had useful information. The viewership of misleading Mandarin videos was higher than the useful ones. WHO accounted for only 4% of useful videos. Mean DISCERN score for reliability was 3.12/5 and 3.25/5 for English and Mandarin videos respectively.Mean cumulative MICI score of useful videos was low (6.71/25 for English and 6.28/25 for Mandarin).Conclusions YouTube viewership during 2019 n-CoV outbreak is higher than previous outbreaks. The medical content of videos is suboptimal International health agencies are

No abstract