Provisional COVID-19 Death Counts and Rates by U.S. Jurisdiction

Provisional data from January 1, 2020 onward contains COVID-19 death counts, rates, and percent of total deaths by jurisdiction of residence. The dataset is grouped by 3-month periods, weekly intervals, and cumulative totals, covering the 50 states, District of Columbia, New York City, and Puerto Rico. It is produced by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services using death certificate data coded to ICD-10 U07.1.

Use Cases

• Analyze weekly COVID-19 death rate trends by U.S. jurisdiction to monitor public health impacts.
• Compare the percent of total deaths attributed to COVID-19 across different HHS regions over 3-month periods.
• Model the lag in death reporting by jurisdiction using provisional counts against final cumulative totals.
• Calculate age-adjusted mortality rates for specific weeks using the provided rate data and the 2000 standard population methodology.

Strengths

• Data covers all 50 U.S. states, the District of Columbia, New York City, and Puerto Rico.
• Death rates are age-adjusted to the 2000 standard population using a direct method for comparability.
• Provides multiple temporal aggregations: weekly, 3-month periods, and cumulative totals since January 2020.

Limitations

• Recent period data is incomplete due to reporting lags of 1 to 8+ weeks between death occurrence and certificate processing.
• Death counts should not be compared across states due to varying data timeliness and reporting schedules (daily, weekly, or monthly).
• Provisional counts may not represent all deaths that occurred in a period, as they include only deaths received and coded by the analysis date.

Provenance

Source

U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS).

Collection Method

Aggregated from death certificates with confirmed or presumed COVID-19 (ICD-10 code U07.1) submitted by state jurisdictions.

Time Range

From January 1, 2020 onward.

Freshness

Last updated March 20, 2026.

Geography

United States, including 50 states, District of Columbia, New York City, and Puerto Rico, aggregated by ten HHS regions.