A COVID-19 death is defined for surveillance purposes as a death resulting from a clinically compatible illness in a probable or confirmed COVID-19 case unless there is a clear alternative cause of death that cannot be related to COVID-19 disease (e.g. trauma). There should be no period of complete recovery between illness and death

From the 31 December 2019 to the 21 March 2020, WHO collected the numbers of confirmed COVID-19 cases and deaths through official communications under the International Health Regulations (IHR, 2005), complemented by monitoring the official ministries of health websites and social media accounts. Since 22 March 2020, global data is compiled through WHO region-specific dashboards, and/or aggregate count data reported to WHO headquarters.

WHO COVID-19 Dashboard is updated every Friday for the period of two weeks prior. 

Counts primarily reflect laboratory-confirmed cases and deaths, based upon WHO case definitions; although some departures may exist due to local adaptations. Counts include both domestic and repatriated cases. Case detection, definitions, testing strategies, reporting practice, and lag times (e.g. time to case notification, and time to reporting of deaths) differ between countries, territories and areas. These factors, amongst others, influence the counts presented with variable under or overestimation of true case and death counts, and variable delays to reflecting these data at a global level.

All data represent date of reporting as opposed to date of symptom onset. All data are subject to continuous verification and may change based on retrospective updates to accurately reflect trends, changes in country case definitions and/or reporting practices. Significant data errors detected or reported to WHO may be corrected at more frequent intervals.

New case and death counts from the Region of the Americas
Starting from the week commencing on 11 September 2023, the source of the data from the Region of the Americas was switched to the aggregated national surveillances, received through the COVID-19, Influenza, RSV and Other Respiratory Viruses program in the Americas. Data have been included retrospectively since 31 July 2023.

Rates
<0.001 per 100,000 population may be rounded to 0.

The age-specific number of deaths is compiled from the following sources: official reports submitted to the WHO through regional offices via case report forms or weekly detailed aggregate reporting, as well as data from official public websites that are not officially reported to WHO. WHO Member States select their preferred reporting system and data from different reporting systems are reconciled (referred to as "detailed surveillance data"). Individual countries, areas and territories may decline to allow country-level disaggregation.

This data is updated on a monthly basis.

The four age groups shown on this dashboard may differ for some countries that report more age groups with smaller ranges. Data from these countries are aggregated into larger age groups to enable a global compilation, considering the disease's impact across different age groups.

Due to differences in the range of age groups reported and to changes in reporting systems over time within countries, adjustments have been made to consistently attribute deaths across age groups.

Adjustments to age groups in 2021:
As a result of an update in weekly detailed aggregate reporting, the age groups within which new cases and deaths are aggregated have changed; this has resulted in one age group (20-29 years) included in 2021 to be incompatible with the previous banding system (15-24, 24-64 years). To allow these data to be incorporated, we have used national age-stratified population data to distribute these cases and deaths accordingly for each country.

This approach has been used similarly by the Max Planck Institute: Timothy Riffe & Enrique Acosta & José M. Aburto & Diego Alburez-Gutierrez & Ugofilippo Basellini & Anna Altová & Simona Bignami & Didier Breton & Eungang Choi & Jorge Cimentada & Gonzalo De Armas & Em, 2020. "COVerAGE-DB: a database of age-structured COVID-19 cases and deaths," MPIDR Working Papers WP-2020-032, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany.

The summary of the method is below:

• Age-stratified population data from the World Population Prospects 2019 Revision were imported and filtered to select the 2020 population data.
• The proportion of individuals aged 20-24 years and 25-29 years was inferred from the national age-stratified population data for each country.
• The case and death data for the 20-29 year band were then reallocated to 20-24 year and 25-29 year bands, weighted by the proportional data for each country.
• All other age groups remained unchanged.

Caveats related to detailed surveillance data:

• Completeness for indicators varies between countries, regions, and over time.
• Detailed surveillance data may reflect different sub-national jurisdictions than those used for cases and deaths data, and thus may not follow a similar pattern.
• Reporting delays can be observed.
• Case identification in a country is subject to detection and testing strategies, which vary between countries and over time.
• Regardless of the definitions provided, these data might include incidental deaths.
• Due to varying degrees of information collection and submission, it is recommended to analyze each country/territory independently.
• Data sources might change over time from universal to sentinel reporting for some indicators in some countries.
  • For example, new hospitalizations from the United States of America have been reported from a hospital network since 20 February 2024.
  • Due to the scarcity of global reporting and the importance of sharing available information publicly, we continue to reflect this data.
  • Please be cautious while interpreting sharp decreases in the volume of data compared to previous periods.

This data previously presented in WHO COVID-19 DETAILED SURVEILLANCE DATA DASHBOARD.

Estimated populations and projections are drawn from:

• United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division. World Population Prospects 2019, Online Edition. Rev. 1 (2020 projections).
• Eurostat. “Demo_pjan” (population as of 1 January by country, year, age and gender; last updated by Eurostat on 2021-02-12; last year of data: 2020).
• National Statistics Office Malta.
• The Government of the Pitcairn Islands.
• Statistics Netherlands (CBS). Estimates of population for Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba.

*Total population for France has been adjusted to account for the following overseas territories (French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Mayotte, Réunion, Saint Martin).

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