Hepatitis in the News, 2019–2026: Attention Peaks, Geography and Tone of Global Hepatitis Coverage, and How It Compares with Research and Invention

We measure how hepatitis was covered in a global news index from January 2019 to July 2026, using 20,131 de-duplicated hepatitis articles, and set that coverage beside 76,394 research papers and 6,018 patent families on hepatitis. Six results stand out: Attention peaks. Hepatitis took its largest share of news in May 2022, during the alerts about acute hepatitis of unknown origin in children, at 6.69 articles per 10,000, 3.3 times its 2019 annual share. The next highest month after mid-2022 was December 2025 (3.66), the month of a US vaccine advisory meeting on the hepatitis B birth dose. Seasonality. On average 12.48% of each year's hepatitis coverage appears in July, the month of World Hepatitis Day, against 8.33% for an even spread. Geography. The United States holds 53.11% of located hepatitis news, close to its weight in the index (lift 1.1). Africa is the most over-represented continent (1.74) and Europe the least (0.82). Among US states with 50 or more located articles, Massachusetts (3.24) and California (2.63) lead; within India, Uttar Pradesh (1.96). Between 2023 and 2025 hepatitis attention in US news rose 2.7-fold. Tone and urgency. 81.5% of hepatitis articles are rated critical priority (all news: 42.6%), but only 36.1% are negative in tone (all news: 33.6%). Vaccination policy is the most specific theme. Measurement. Exclusion patterns for journal abstracts, market-research notices and templated updates removed 59.47% of raw matches for the word hepatitis. Research and invention. Between 2015 and 2025, hepatitis papers fell from 12.35 to 8.28 per 10,000 papers. Hepatitis patent families published per year fell from 837 to 412 between 2015 and 2024, and China's office held 44.9% of office filings.