U.S. County-Level COVID-19 Death Counts for 2020

Provisional death counts involving COVID-19 for every U.S. county during the first year of the pandemic. The data, published by data.cdc.gov, covers the period from January 1, 2020, through December 31, 2020. Each record includes the county of occurrence, state, and FIPS code for geographic analysis.

Use Cases

• Analyze temporal trends in COVID-19 mortality using Start Date and End Date columns.
• Compare COVID-19 death rates across states and counties using State, County of Occurrence, and COVID-19 Deaths columns.
• Calculate the proportion of total deaths attributed to COVID-19 using COVID-19 Deaths and Total Deaths columns.
• Join with other demographic datasets for county-level analysis using the Fips Code column.

Strengths

• Data covers the entire United States at the county level for a full calendar year.
• Includes both COVID-19-specific and total death counts, enabling proportional analysis.
• Provides standardized geographic identifiers (Fips Code) for reliable data joins.

Limitations

• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Description metadata is limited; actual data quality requires manual inspection after download.

Provenance

Source

data.cdc.gov

Collection Method

Provisional count of deaths involving coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) by United States county of occurrence.

Time Range

January 1, 2020 through December 31, 2020

Freshness

Last updated 2025-04-21 16:19:13; freshness should be verified.

Geography

United States, county-level