Provisional Weekly Death Counts for Influenza, Pneumonia, and COVID-19 by State and Age

Weekly provisional death counts for influenza, pneumonia, and COVID-19 are reported to the National Center for Health Statistics. The data is aggregated by week ending date, state, HHS region, and age group. It is produced by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services and was last updated in April 2025.

Use Cases

• Analyze weekly death trends for COVID-19, influenza, and pneumonia across different states to monitor public health impacts.
• Compare mortality rates for different age groups to identify vulnerable populations during respiratory disease seasons.
• Track provisional death counts by HHS region to assess the geographic spread and severity of viral outbreaks.
• Model the temporal relationship between weekly death counts for multiple causes to study disease co-circulation.

Strengths

• Data is updated weekly, providing near-real-time surveillance of mortality trends.
• Covers multiple causes of death (COVID-19, influenza, pneumonia) allowing for comparative analysis.
• Includes breakdowns by key demographic and geographic dimensions such as state, HHS region, and age group.
• Sourced from the authoritative U.S. National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) mortality surveillance system.

Limitations

• Data is provisional and subject to revision as death certificates are processed, which may affect trend accuracy.
• Specific data volume metrics like row count and column details are unavailable, limiting pre-analysis assessment of scale and granularity.
• The 'other-license-specified' requires users to review specific terms before use.

Provenance

Source

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

Collection Method

Provisional death counts reported to the National Vital Statistics System (NVSS) by week ending date.

Time Range

Weekly data; specific start date unknown.

Freshness

Last updated on 2025-04-23.

Geography

United States, by state and HHS region.