Data on COVID-19 (coronavirus) by Our World in Data#

🗂️ Download our complete COVID-19 dataset : CSV | XLSX | JSON #

Our complete COVID-19 dataset is a collection of the COVID-19 data maintained by Our World in Data. We will update it daily throughout the duration of the COVID-19 pandemic (more information on our updating process and schedule here). It includes the following data:

Metrics	Source	Updated	Countries
Vaccinations	Official data collated by the Our World in Data team	Daily	218
Tests & positivity	Official data collated by the Our World in Data team	No longer updated (read more at #2667)	193
Hospital & ICU	Official data collated by the Our World in Data team	Daily	47
Confirmed cases	JHU CSSE COVID-19 Data	Daily	219
Confirmed deaths	JHU CSSE COVID-19 Data	Daily	219
Reproduction rate	Arroyo-Marioli F, Bullano F, Kucinskas S, Rondón-Moreno C	Daily	195
Policy responses	Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker	Daily	187
Other variables of interest	International organizations (UN, World Bank, OECD, IHME…)	Fixed	241

A specific section of this repository is also dedicated to vaccinations, with a lighter dataset containing only vaccination data.

The data you find here and our data sources#

Confirmed cases and deaths: our data comes from the COVID-19 Data Repository by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University (JHU). We discuss how and when JHU collects and publishes this data here. The cases & deaths dataset is updated daily.
- Note: confirmed cases and deaths are collected by Johns Hopkins University by date of report, rathen than date of test/death. Therefore the number they report on a given day does not necessarily represent the actual number on that date, because of the long reporting chain that exists between a new case/death and its inclusion in statistics. This also means that time series can show sudden changes (negative or positive) when a country corrects historical data, because it had previously under- or overestimated the number of cases/deaths.
Hospitalizations and intensive care unit (ICU) admissions: our data is collected from official sources and collated by Our World in Data. The complete list of country-by-country sources is available here.
Testing for COVID-19: this data is collected by the Our World in Data team from official reports; you can find further details in our post on COVID-19 testing, including our checklist of questions to understand testing data, information on geographical and temporal coverage, and detailed country-by-country source information. On 23 June 2022, we stopped adding new datapoints to our COVID-19 testing dataset. You can read more here.
Vaccinations against COVID-19: this data is collected by the Our World in Data team from official reports.
Other variables: this data is collected from a variety of sources (United Nations, World Bank, Global Burden of Disease, Blavatnik School of Government, etc.). More information is available in our codebook.

The complete Our World in Data COVID-19 dataset#

Our complete COVID-19 dataset is available in CSV, XLSX, and JSON formats, and includes all of our historical data on the pandemic up to the date of publication.

The CSV and XLSX files follow a format of 1 row per location and date. The JSON version is split by country ISO code, with static variables and an array of daily records.

The variables represent all of our main data related to confirmed cases, deaths, hospitalizations, and testing, as well as other variables of potential interest.

Confirmed cases#

Variable	Description
`total_cases`	Total confirmed cases of COVID-19. Counts can include probable cases, where reported.
`new_cases`	New confirmed cases of COVID-19. Counts can include probable cases, where reported. In rare cases where our source reports a negative daily change due to a data correction, we set this metric to NA.
`new_cases_smoothed`	New confirmed cases of COVID-19 (7-day smoothed). Counts can include probable cases, where reported.
`total_cases_per_million`	Total confirmed cases of COVID-19 per 1,000,000 people. Counts can include probable cases, where reported.
`new_cases_per_million`	New confirmed cases of COVID-19 per 1,000,000 people. Counts can include probable cases, where reported.
`new_cases_smoothed_per_million`	New confirmed cases of COVID-19 (7-day smoothed) per 1,000,000 people. Counts can include probable cases, where reported.

Confirmed deaths#

Variable	Description
`total_deaths`	Total deaths attributed to COVID-19. Counts can include probable deaths, where reported.
`new_deaths`	New deaths attributed to COVID-19. Counts can include probable deaths, where reported. In rare cases where our source reports a negative daily change due to a data correction, we set this metric to NA.
`new_deaths_smoothed`	New deaths attributed to COVID-19 (7-day smoothed). Counts can include probable deaths, where reported.
`total_deaths_per_million`	Total deaths attributed to COVID-19 per 1,000,000 people. Counts can include probable deaths, where reported.
`new_deaths_per_million`	New deaths attributed to COVID-19 per 1,000,000 people. Counts can include probable deaths, where reported.
`new_deaths_smoothed_per_million`	New deaths attributed to COVID-19 (7-day smoothed) per 1,000,000 people. Counts can include probable deaths, where reported.

Notes:#

Due to varying protocols and challenges in the attribution of the cause of death, the number of confirmed deaths may not accurately represent the true number of deaths caused by COVID-19.

Excess mortality#

Variable	Description
`excess_mortality`	Percentage difference between the reported number of weekly or monthly deaths in 2020–2021 and the projected number of deaths for the same period based on previous years. For more information, see https://github.com/owid/covid-19-data/tree/master/public/data/excess_mortality
`excess_mortality_cumulative`	Percentage difference between the cumulative number of deaths since 1 January 2020 and the cumulative projected deaths for the same period based on previous years. For more information, see https://github.com/owid/covid-19-data/tree/master/public/data/excess_mortality
`excess_mortality_cumulative_absolute`	Cumulative difference between the reported number of deaths since 1 January 2020 and the projected number of deaths for the same period based on previous years. For more information, see https://github.com/owid/covid-19-data/tree/master/public/data/excess_mortality
`excess_mortality_cumulative_per_million`	Cumulative difference between the reported number of deaths since 1 January 2020 and the projected number of deaths for the same period based on previous years, per million people. For more information, see https://github.com/owid/covid-19-data/tree/master/public/data/excess_mortality

Hospital & ICU#

Variable	Description
`icu_patients`	Number of COVID-19 patients in intensive care units (ICUs) on a given day
`icu_patients_per_million`	Number of COVID-19 patients in intensive care units (ICUs) on a given day per 1,000,000 people
`hosp_patients`	Number of COVID-19 patients in hospital on a given day
`hosp_patients_per_million`	Number of COVID-19 patients in hospital on a given day per 1,000,000 people
`weekly_icu_admissions`	Number of COVID-19 patients newly admitted to intensive care units (ICUs) in a given week (reporting date and the preceeding 6 days)
`weekly_icu_admissions_per_million`	Number of COVID-19 patients newly admitted to intensive care units (ICUs) in a given week per 1,000,000 people (reporting date and the preceeding 6 days)
`weekly_hosp_admissions`	Number of COVID-19 patients newly admitted to hospitals in a given week (reporting date and the preceeding 6 days)
`weekly_hosp_admissions_per_million`	Number of COVID-19 patients newly admitted to hospitals in a given week per 1,000,000 people (reporting date and the preceeding 6 days)

Policy responses#

Variable	Description
`stringency_index`	Government Response Stringency Index: composite measure based on 9 response indicators including school closures, workplace closures, and travel bans, rescaled to a value from 0 to 100 (100 = strictest response)

Reproduction rate#

Variable	Description
`reproduction_rate`	Real-time estimate of the effective reproduction rate (R) of COVID-19. See https://github.com/crondonm/TrackingR/tree/main/Estimates-Database

Tests & positivity#

On 23 June 2022, we stopped adding new datapoints to our COVID-19 testing dataset. You can read more at https://github.com/owid/covid-19-data/discussions/2667.

Variable	Description
`total_tests`	Total tests for COVID-19
`new_tests`	New tests for COVID-19 (only calculated for consecutive days)
`total_tests_per_thousand`	Total tests for COVID-19 per 1,000 people
`new_tests_per_thousand`	New tests for COVID-19 per 1,000 people
`new_tests_smoothed`	New tests for COVID-19 (7-day smoothed). For countries that don’t report testing data on a daily basis, we assume that testing changed equally on a daily basis over any periods in which no data was reported. This produces a complete series of daily figures, which is then averaged over a rolling 7-day window
`new_tests_smoothed_per_thousand`	New tests for COVID-19 (7-day smoothed) per 1,000 people
`positive_rate`	The share of COVID-19 tests that are positive, given as a rolling 7-day average (this is the inverse of tests_per_case)
`tests_per_case`	Tests conducted per new confirmed case of COVID-19, given as a rolling 7-day average (this is the inverse of positive_rate)
`tests_units`	Units used by the location to report its testing data. A country file can’t contain mixed units. All metrics concerning testing data use the specified test unit. Valid units are ‘people tested’ (number of people tested), ‘tests performed’ (number of tests performed. a single person can be tested more than once in a given day) and ‘samples tested’ (number of samples tested. In some cases, more than one sample may be required to perform a given test.)

Vaccinations#

Variable	Description
`total_vaccinations`	Total number of COVID-19 vaccination doses administered
`people_vaccinated`	Total number of people who received at least one vaccine dose
`people_fully_vaccinated`	Total number of people who received all doses prescribed by the initial vaccination protocol
`total_boosters`	Total number of COVID-19 vaccination booster doses administered (doses administered beyond the number prescribed by the vaccination protocol)
`new_vaccinations`	New COVID-19 vaccination doses administered (only calculated for consecutive days)
`new_vaccinations_smoothed`	New COVID-19 vaccination doses administered (7-day smoothed). For countries that don’t report vaccination data on a daily basis, we assume that vaccination changed equally on a daily basis over any periods in which no data was reported. This produces a complete series of daily figures, which is then averaged over a rolling 7-day window
`total_vaccinations_per_hundred`	Total number of COVID-19 vaccination doses administered per 100 people in the total population
`people_vaccinated_per_hundred`	Total number of people who received at least one vaccine dose per 100 people in the total population
`people_fully_vaccinated_per_hundred`	Total number of people who received all doses prescribed by the initial vaccination protocol per 100 people in the total population
`total_boosters_per_hundred`	Total number of COVID-19 vaccination booster doses administered per 100 people in the total population
`new_vaccinations_smoothed_per_million`	New COVID-19 vaccination doses administered (7-day smoothed) per 1,000,000 people in the total population
`new_people_vaccinated_smoothed`	Daily number of people receiving their first vaccine dose (7-day smoothed)
`new_people_vaccinated_smoothed_per_hundred`	Daily number of people receiving their first vaccine dose (7-day smoothed) per 100 people in the total population

Others#

Variable	Description
`iso_code`	ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 – three-letter country codes. Note that OWID-defined regions (e.g. continents like ‘Europe’) contain prefix ‘OWID_’.
`continent`	Continent of the geographical location
`location`	Geographical location. Location ‘International’ considers special regions (“Diamond Princess” and “MS Zaandam” cruises).
`date`	Date of observation
`population`	Population (latest available values). See https://github.com/owid/covid-19-data/blob/master/scripts/input/un/population_latest.csv for full list of sources
`population_density`	Number of people divided by land area, measured in square kilometers, most recent year available
`median_age`	Median age of the population, UN projection for 2020
`aged_65_older`	Share of the population that is 65 years and older, most recent year available
`aged_70_older`	Share of the population that is 70 years and older in 2015
`gdp_per_capita`	Gross domestic product at purchasing power parity (constant 2011 international dollars), most recent year available
`extreme_poverty`	Share of the population living in extreme poverty, most recent year available since 2010
`cardiovasc_death_rate`	Death rate from cardiovascular disease in 2017 (annual number of deaths per 100,000 people)
`diabetes_prevalence`	Diabetes prevalence (% of population aged 20 to 79) in 2017
`female_smokers`	Share of women who smoke, most recent year available
`male_smokers`	Share of men who smoke, most recent year available
`handwashing_facilities`	Share of the population with basic handwashing facilities on premises, most recent year available
`hospital_beds_per_thousand`	Hospital beds per 1,000 people, most recent year available since 2010
`life_expectancy`	Life expectancy at birth in 2019
`human_development_index`	A composite index measuring average achievement in three basic dimensions of human development—a long and healthy life, knowledge and a decent standard of living. Values for 2019, imported from http://hdr.undp.org/en/indicators/137506

A full codebook is made available, with a description and source for each variable in the dataset.

Additional files and information#

If you are interested in the individual files that make up the complete dataset, or more detailed information, other files can be found in the subfolders:

latest: shortened version of our complete dataset with only the latest value for each location and metric (within a limit of 2 weeks in the past). This file is available in CSV, XLSX, and JSON formats.
jhu: data from the COVID-19 Data Repository by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University, related to confirmed cases and deaths. We also automatically export JHU’s subnational case and death data for a few countries (Australia, Canada, China, Denmark, France, Netherlands, New Zealand, United Kingdom, United States) to a reshaped and compressed file (subnational_cases_deaths.zip).
testing: data from various official sources, related to COVID-19 tests performed in each country. This folder contains two files with more detailed information:
- covid-testing-all-observations.csv includes, for each historical observation, the source of the individual data point, and sometimes notes on data collection;
- covid-testing-latest-data-source-details.csv includes, for each country in our testing dataset, the latest figures and a detailed description of how the country’s data is collected;
excess_mortality: data on excess mortality during the pandemic, sourced from the Human Mortality Database and the UK Office for National Statistics;
vaccinations: data from various official sources, related to COVID-19 vaccinations in each country;
archived: data from other providers that we’ve stopped using and updating;
internal: data extracts intended for internal use at Our World in Data. They may change or be deleted without notice so we discourage using them.

Changelog#

Up until 17 March 2020, we were using WHO data manually extracted from their daily situation report PDFs.
From 19 March 2020, we started relying on data published by the European CDC. We wrote about why we decided to switch sources.
On 3 April 2020, we added country-level time series on COVID-19 tests.
On 16 April 2020, we made available a complete dataset of all of our main variables related to confirmed cases, deaths, and tests.
On 25 April 2020, we added rows for “World” and “International” to our complete dataset. The iso_code column for “International” is blank, and for “World” we use OWID_WRL.
On 9 May 2020, we added new variables related to demographic, economic, and public health data to our complete dataset.
On 19 May 2020, we added 2 variables related to testing: new_tests_smoothed and new_tests_smoothed_per_thousand. To generate them we assume that testing changed equally on a daily basis over any periods in which no data was reported (as not all countries report testing data on a daily basis). This produces a complete series of daily figures, which is then averaged over a rolling 7-day window.
On 23 May 2020, we added a JSON version of our complete dataset.
On 4 June 2020, we added a continent column to our complete dataset.
On 1 July 2020, we changed the format of the JSON version of our complete dataset to normalize the data and reduce file size.
On 4 August 2020, we added the positive_rate and tests_per_case columns to our complete dataset.
On 7 August 2020, we transformed our markdown codebook to a CSV file to allow easier merging with the complete dataset.
On 17 August 2020, we added 4 variables related to cases and deaths: new_cases_smoothed, new_deaths_smoothed, new_cases_smoothed_per_million, and new_deaths_smoothed_per_million. These metrics are averaged versions (over a rolling 7-day window) of the daily variables.
On 10 September 2020, we added the human_development_index column to our complete dataset.
On 14 October 2020, we added data on excess mortality during the pandemic in the excess_mortality folder, sourced from the Human Mortality Database and the UK Office for National Statistics.
On 29 October 2020, we added data on hospitalizations and intensive care unit (ICU) admissions, sourced from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), who provide these statistics only for a select number of European countries, and update it on a weekly basis.
On 10 November 2020, we added data on hospitalizations and intensive care unit (ICU) admissions for the United States, sourced from the COVID Tracking Project.
On 13 November 2020, we added real-time estimates of the effective reproduction rate (R) of the virus, sourced from Arroyo Marioli et al. (2020).
On 30 November 2020, we changed our source for confirmed cases and deaths to the COVID-19 Data Repository by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University. Our previous source for confirmed cases and deaths, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), had announced in November 2020 that it would switch from a daily to a weekly reporting schedule from December. Our World in Data therefore had to transition away from the ECDC as a source to continue to provide daily updates of confirmed cases and deaths. The format (variable names and types) of our complete COVID-19 dataset remains the same.
On 9 December 2020, we changed the names of three countries in our files to match their recently-changed official names. Czech Republic has become Czechia, Macedonia has become North Macedonia, and Swaziland has become Eswatini.
On 16 December 2020, we started collecting country-level time series on COVID-19 vaccinations.
On 18 December 2020, we added in the latest folder a shortened version of our complete dataset with only the latest value for each location and metric (within a limit of 2 weeks in the past). This file is available in CSV, XLSX, and JSON formats.
On 19 December 2020, we added data on hospitalizations and intensive care unit (ICU) admissions for Canada, sourced from the COVID-19 Tracker.
On 6 January 2021, we added two variables for daily vaccinations to our complete dataset.
On 7 January 2021, we replaced the United Kingdom’s hospital and ICU data previously gathered by the European CDC with the official data published by the British government.
On 26 January 2021, we added 4 variables on people vaccinated and people fully vaccinated to our complete dataset.
On 4 February 2021, we added rows for Africa, Asia, Europe, European Union, North America, Oceania, and South America to our complete dataset. The iso_code column for these rows starts with OWID_.
On 5 March 2021, due to the COVID Tracking Project’s announcement that their data collection effort would stop in March 2021, we transitioned to the Department of Health & Human Services as our source for data on hospitalizations and ICU admissions in the United States.
On 15 July 2021, we added data on intensive care unit (ICU) patients for Algeria, sourced from the Ministry of Health.
On 11 August 2021, we added the metric total_boosters to our vaccination data. This counts the total number of booster doses (doses administered beyond the number prescribed by the vaccination protocol).
On 12 August 2021, we added hospital and ICU data for Switzerland, sourced from the Federal Office of Public Health.
On 28 September 2021, we changed the way we estimate the excess mortality. More details here. We also added 3 new variables to our complete dataset: excess_mortality_cumulative (cumulative % of excess deaths), excess_mortality_cumulative_absolute (cumulative count of absolute excess deaths), excess_mortality_cumulative_per_million (cumulative count of excess deaths per million people).
On 15 November 2021, we added the metrics new_people_vaccinated_smoothed and new_people_vaccinated_smoothed_per_hundred to our vaccination data. They count the daily number of people receiving their first vaccine dose.
On 27 December 2021, we added a specific folder for our hospitalizations & ICU data.
Since 29 March 2022, vaccination data is no longer updated on a daily basis. Updates now are only on weekdays (Monday until Friday).

Data alterations#

In rare cases where our source for confirmed cases & deaths reports a negative daily change due to a data correction, we set the corresponding metric (new_cases or new_deaths) to NA. This also means that rolling metrics (7-day rolling average, weekly rolling sum, biweekly rolling sum) are set to NA until this missing value leaves the rolling window.
The population estimates we use to calculate per-capita metrics are based on the last revision of the United Nations World Population Prospects. The exact values can be viewed here. In a few cases, we use other sources (see column source in the population file) when the figures provided by the UN differ substantially from reliable and more recent national estimates. Population estimates for a few subnational locations are taken from national reports, and are stored here.
We standardize names of countries and regions. Since the names of countries and regions are different in different data sources, we standardize all names to the Our World in Data standard entity names.
We may correct or discard inconsistencies that we detect in the original data.
Testing data is collected from many different sources. A detailed documentation for each country is available in our post on COVID-19 testing.

Stable URLs#

The /public path of this repository is hosted at https://covid.ourworldindata.org/. For example, you can access the CSV for the complete dataset at https://covid.ourworldindata.org/data/owid-covid-data.csv or the CSV with latest data at https://covid.ourworldindata.org/data/latest/owid-covid-latest.csv.

We have the goal to keep all stable URLs working, even when we have to restructure this repository. If you need regular updates, please consider using the covid.ourworldindata.org URLs rather than pointing to GitHub.

License#

All visualizations, data, and code produced by Our World in Data are completely open access under the Creative Commons BY license. You have the permission to use, distribute, and reproduce these in any medium, provided the source and authors are credited.

In the case of our vaccination dataset, please give the following citation:

Mathieu, E., Ritchie, H., Ortiz-Ospina, E. et al. A global database of COVID-19 vaccinations. Nat Hum Behav (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-021-01122-8

In the case of our testing dataset, please give the following citation:

Hasell, J., Mathieu, E., Beltekian, D. et al. A cross-country database of COVID-19 testing. Sci Data 7, 345 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-020-00688-8

The data produced by third parties and made available by Our World in Data is subject to the license terms from the original third-party authors. We will always indicate the original source of the data in our database, and you should always check the license of any such third-party data before use.

Authors#

This data has been collected, aggregated, and documented by Cameron Appel, Diana Beltekian, Daniel Gavrilov, Charlie Giattino, Joe Hasell, Bobbie Macdonald, Edouard Mathieu, Esteban Ortiz-Ospina, Hannah Ritchie, Lucas Rodés-Guirao, Max Roser.

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