Introduction: During the COVID-19 pandemic, there is a growing global interest in searching online information about the coronavirus. Our study aimed to investigate the Digital Health Literacy (DHL) level, information-seeking behaviour, and satisfaction of information on  COVID-19 among East and South-East Asia university students.

Methods: This cross-sectional web-based study was conducted between April to June 2020 by recruiting students from the universities in China, Malaysia, and the Philippines.  Students who are aged ≥15 years old and have Internet access were invited  to participate in the study. Sociodemographic variables, DHL scale, information-seeking behaviour, and satisfaction items were included in the questionnaire. Descriptive statistics and logistic regression analysis were conducted.

Results: A total of 5351 university students responded to the survey. The overall mean score of the four DHL subscales was 2.89 (SD 0.42). “Search engines (eg. Google, Bing, Yahoo)” and social media (88.4%) were highly utilized by the students (91.9%), whereas “websites of doctors or health insurance companies” were of lower relevance (64.6%). Higher DHL in the domains of information searching, determining relevance, evaluating reliability, and protecting privacy were positively associated with the usage of more reliable resources. Meanwhile, utilizing social media and online encyclopaedias were more likely to occur among students with insufficient DHL skills in evaluating information source reliability.

Conclusion: The utilization of limited reliable resources is still common among university students in COVID-19 related information searching. Therefore, strengthening the DHL among the students will enhance their critical thinking and evaluation of online resources, which could direct them to the quality and trustworthy information sources on COVID-19.