Our World in Data will rely on data from the WHO to track confirmed COVID-19 cases and deaths

[lucasrodes]

Johns Hopkins University will stop publishing data on confirmed COVID-19 cases and deaths. Our team will replace our entire time series with WHO’s weekly-updated data on 8 March. This change will not affect users of our charts and dataset.

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Johns Hopkins University has been at the forefront of collecting and reporting data on confirmed COVID-19 cases and deaths since the outbreak began in 2020. However, it recently announced that it would stop updating its data on 10 March 2023.

Our team at Our World in Data recognizes the importance of up-to-date data on the pandemic. We will switch our primary source to the World Health Organization (WHO), which updates its dataset weekly.

To keep this data consistent over time, we will replace the entire time series with WHO data on 8 March 2023.

Our goal is to continue providing the most complete and timely data on the pandemic, and relying on the WHO data is the best way to achieve this.

This change will be seamless for our users. The URL of all our charts and the variable names in our dataset will remain the same.

All other COVID-19 datasets we maintain will remain unchanged.

We want to take this opportunity to thank the team at Johns Hopkins for their crucial work since the beginning of the pandemic. Their efforts have been invaluable in helping us understand the impact of this virus across the world.

[beansrowning]

Are Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau being handled separately or dropped entirely from the Cases/Deaths metrics?

[lucasrodes]

Hi @beansrowning,
Thanks for your message.

We now rely on the WHO COVID-19 Dashboard (see https://covid19.who.int/). You can read more about this in our post: https://ourworldindata.org/covid-jhu-who.

Important notes:

• The data is shared once a week by the WHO.
• The WHO records the cases and deaths in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau under China.
• You can access our latest export (8 March 2023) with data from Johns Hopkins University at https://covid.ourworldindata.org/data/owid-covid-data-old.csv.

I hope that this helps,
Best regards,

[beansrowning]

Thanks. We require disaggregated data for these three so will have to start pulling those data from primary sources.

[MikhailKuklin]

Hello. Do I understand correctly that the next update of https://covid.ourworldindata.org/data/owid-covid-data.csv will be on the 15th of March e.g. one week from the 8th of March?

[lucasrodes]

Hi @MikhailKuklin,
This file is updated on a daily basis. However, the metrics concerning confirmed cases and deaths are only updated whenever the WHO updates their dataset. The WHO has announced that they are updating their dataset once a week, on Wednesdays.

In summary, new confirmed cases and deaths values should be available every Thursday at https://covid.ourworldindata.org/data/owid-covid-data.csv

[MikhailKuklin]

Hi @MikhailKuklin, This file is updated on a daily basis. However, the metrics concerning confirmed cases and deaths are only updated whenever the WHO updates their dataset. The WHO has announced that they are updating their dataset once a week, on Wednesdays.

In summary, new confirmed cases and deaths values should be available every Thursday at https://covid.ourworldindata.org/data/owid-covid-data.csv

Thank you @lucasrodes. If I understand correctly, columns with the metrics concerning confirmed cases and deaths pass nan before Thu?

[lucasrodes]

@MikhailKuklin Yes! If of interest, we have this dataset with only confirmed cases/deaths: https://github.com/owid/covid-19-data/blob/master/public/data/cases_deaths/full_data.csv. Not all metrics are present there and some names might differ from the primary dataset (https://covid.ourworldindata.org/data/owid-covid-data.csv).

[jeremyg7]

it seems like updating USA daily/weekly covid deaths and cases seems to have stopped around May 21 unless i'm missing something?

[jeremyg7]

so looking closer to both the full dataset and the cases/deaths dataset, some countries like the USA seem to have stopped updating entirely in mid-May.

it looks like last reported covid deaths in the USA from WHO is 1,943 on May 14 (both in your dataset and dashboard).

some countries still seem to update (South Korea, Italy, Israel), others (USA, Japan) seem to have just 0's reported for weeks. guessing a WHO issue since it seems to mirror their dashboard, but wondering if any info on what to expect going forward.

[lucasrodes]

Hi @jeremyg7,
Thanks for your message.

We publish WHO's data without any alterations, so it looks like an issue for which the WHO will be better positioned to comment.

I just reached out to the WHO, asking for more information in this regard.

[jeremyg7]

any further info? doesn't look like the WHO has updated USA counts in two months.

[beansrowning]

any further info? doesn't look like the WHO has updated USA counts in two months.

Many countries ceased reporting or changed reporting patterns to WHO following the ending of the PHEIC on 5/5, and/or national emergency declarations. Following the ending of the Public Health Emergency declaration in the US on 5/11, there is no longer a mandatory requirement for states to submit case counts in the way they had while the declaration was in place.

Even prior to that, case reporting in the US and many other countries has been very skewed as most opt for at-home Rapid Antigen Tests versus PCR, which are reportable via the clinical or public health laboratory they're processed in. I suspect for those reasons and many other political ones, case reporting was no longer viable.

Japan, as you identified, also scaled back its national response and categorized COVID-19 as a Category 5 Infectious Disease on 5/9, in line with Influenza. Many of the nationally reported metrics have stopped updating as a result.