Weekly Death Counts by Jurisdiction and Cause, 2015-2020

Weekly counts of deaths by jurisdiction and selected causes of death, intended for comparison with historical baselines. The dataset, published by data.cdc.gov, includes counts for causes like respiratory diseases, circulatory diseases, malignant neoplasms, and Alzheimer disease and dementia. It was last updated on April 21, 2025, but updates ceased after September 27, 2023.

Use Cases

• Analyze weekly mortality trends by Jurisdiction and Cause Group using Week Ending Date and Number of Deaths.
• Compare recent death counts to a historical baseline using Difference from 2015-2019 to 2020 and Percent Difference from 2015-2019 to 2020.
• Track seasonal or cause-specific mortality patterns by grouping data by Week, Year, and Cause Subgroup.
• Assess data reporting completeness or suppression flags using the Suppress and Note columns.

Strengths

• Includes a direct comparison metric to a 2015-2019 baseline via the Difference from 2015-2019 to 2020 column.
• Provides data at a weekly granularity for multiple jurisdictions, indicated by Week Ending Date and Jurisdiction columns.
• Covers specific cause groups (Respiratory, Circulatory, Cancer, Alzheimer/Dementia) as detailed in the description.

Limitations

• Updates ceased after September 27, 2023, limiting analysis of recent periods.
• Row count and total dataset size are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Deaths with COVID-19 as the underlying cause or from external/unknown causes are excluded, as noted in the description.

Provenance

Source

data.cdc.gov

Collection Method

Likely compiled from U.S. death certificate data via the National Vital Statistics System (NVSS).

Time Range

The columns suggest coverage includes years from at least 2015 to 2020, with weekly data.

Freshness

Last updated 2025-04-21 16:20:14; however, data collection ended on September 27, 2023.

Geography

Jurisdiction and State Abbreviation columns indicate coverage of multiple U.S. states and possibly other jurisdictions.