Following the outbreak of SARS-CoV-2, collectivistic words have been used more frequently on Sina Weibo and the People’s Daily. However, the studies on Sina Weibo and the People’s Daily can only reflect the overall impact by SARS-CoV-2 in China. To examine the influence of SARS-CoV-2 on collectivism/individualism, we first investigated the Hubei Daily, an authoritative local media in Hubei, the first province to discover SARS-CoV-2, to see the impact of SARS-CoV-2 on collectivism/individualism. We analyzed data from the Hubei Daily, using the same collectivistic/individualistic words identified in prior studies and found that the outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 increased collectivism and decreased individualism significantly. Next, we analyzed the same data using the individualistic/collectivistic word bank created in a different cross-culture study based on Sina Weibo posts. The results showed that, during the SARS-CoV-2, collectivistic words were used more frequently; no significant changes were seen regarding individualist words. Lastly, we created a COVID-19 word bank and conducted a regression analysis to examine the relationship between collectivistic word frequency and COVID-19 word frequency in the after-breakout period of SARS-CoV-2 and found that the severity of SARS-CoV-2 predicted collectivist word frequency change in the Hubei Daily.