Weekly U.S. Death Counts by State and Cause, 2020-2023

United States provisional mortality data by week of occurrence, state, and select causes from 2020 to 2023. The dataset includes counts for all-cause mortality and specific causes like COVID-19, influenza, and heart disease, sourced from the CDC's National Vital Statistics System. Data publication ceased in September 2023, with a one-week reporting lag.

Use Cases

• Analyze temporal trends in COVID-19 (U071, Underlying Cause of Death) and influenza (J09-J18) mortality using MMWR Week and MMWR Year.
• Compare all-cause mortality (All Cause) across different states using the Jurisdiction of Occurrence column.
• Investigate co-morbidity patterns by examining weekly counts for multiple specific causes like Diseases of heart (I00-I09,I11,I13,I20-I51) and Chronic lower respiratory diseases (J40-J47).
• Track the weekly progression of natural-cause mortality (Natural Cause) against specific disease categories over the four-year period.

Strengths

• Includes weekly provisional counts for 2020-2023, covering the primary years of the COVID-19 pandemic.
• Contains over 20 specific cause-of-death columns, including flagged indicators for data quality (e.g., flag_cov19mcod, flag_allcause).
• Data is spatially detailed, broken down by state (Jurisdiction of Occurrence).

Limitations

• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• The dataset is no longer updated as of September 2023; freshness should be verified for current analyses.
• Description metadata is limited; actual data quality requires manual inspection after download.

Provenance

Source

data.cdc.gov

Collection Method

Provisional counts compiled from the National Vital Statistics System (NVSS).

Time Range

2020-2023

Freshness

Last updated 2025-04-21 16:20:43; data collection ceased in September 2023.

Geography

United States, including states and Puerto Rico.