Besides the high infection and mortality rate, the COVID-19 pandemic also causes considerable psychological stress. Research from previous epidemics and pandemics found that health concerns and anxieties relating to a virus outbreak can have a significant psychological impact and have been linked to behaviours ineffective for disease prevention. Health anxiety exists on a spectrum from absent health awareness to pathological health anxiety or hypochondria. Unhelpful practices, such as excessive online information searching (cyberchondria) or doctor visits can amplify or sustain such anxieties. Furthermore, media consumption during a pandemic has been positively associated with anxiety, and so has been related to dysfunctional emotion regulation (i.e. ruminating, catastrophizing). So far, it was assumed that individuals with pre-existing health anxiety are particularly prone to experience virus anxiety with little numerical evidence to back this up. Hence this study sought to quantify whether during the COVID -19 pandemic, pre-existing health anxiety influenced levels of virus anxiety and whether there was a relationship between cyberchondria and virus anxiety. An online survey was conducted within the German population in March 2020 (N = 1615, female predominant, mean age of = 33.36 years) and data was collected using a series of questionnaires. The outcome was consistent with previous studies showing that about half of the participants reported moderate to severe anxiety associated with COVID-19, women being particularly affected. Predisposition to health anxiety and cyberchondria were consistently positively correlated to virus anxiety. Whereby being well informed and having coping strategies seemed to contribute to reduced levels of virus anxiety. The study may be of interest to those who seek evidence on the association between health anxiety and media consumption in relation to pandemic-associated anxiety.