Ontario COVID-19 Deaths by Fatality Type, Daily Counts

Daily counts of COVID-19 deaths in Ontario are categorized by fatality type, including underlying cause, contributing cause, and unknown cause. The Government of Ontario provides this data, which includes a methodological change in December 2022 and a historical update in November 2023. The dataset was last updated on April 17, 2026, but daily updates ceased on November 14, 2024.

Use Cases

• Analyze trends in COVID-19 mortality over time based on daily death counts.
• Compare proportions of deaths where COVID-19 was the underlying cause versus a contributing cause.
• Assess data quality and reporting completeness based on the 'Cause of death unknown or missing' category.
• Model the impact of reporting methodology changes on death counts, as described for December 2022.
• Study data anomalies like spikes and negative numbers resulting from ongoing data corrections.

Strengths

• Data includes a breakdown of deaths by fatality type (underlying cause, contributing cause, unknown/missing).
• The description details a specific methodological change effective December 1, 2022.
• A historical data update from January 2020 to March 2023 was performed on November 30, 2023.
• Data is provided in multiple formats: CSV, XLSX, and HTML.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• The description warns that trends over recent periods should be interpreted with caution due to reporting lags.

Provenance

Source

Government of Ontario

Collection Method

Reported via the Case and Contact Management (CCM) system by Public Health Units.

Time Range

Data likely covers from January 15, 2020 onward, as historical deaths from that date were added.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-17 15:43:21.617775; daily updates ceased on November 14, 2024.

Geography

Ontario, Canada