This public use dataset has 11 data elements reflecting COVID-19 community levels for all available counties. This dataset contains the same values used to display information available at https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/community-levels-county-map.html.

CDC looks at the combination of three metrics — new COVID-19 admissions per 100,000 population in the past 7 days, the percent of staffed inpatient beds occupied by COVID-19 patients, and total new COVID-19 cases per 100,000 population in the past 7 days — to determine the COVID-19 community level. The COVID-19 community level is determined by the higher of the new admissions and inpatient beds metrics, based on the current level of new cases per 100,000 population in the past 7 days. New COVID-19 admissions and the percent of staffed inpatient beds occupied represent the current potential for strain on the health system. Data on new cases acts as an early warning indicator of potential increases in health system strain in the event of a COVID-19 surge.

Using these data, the COVID-19 community level is classified as low, medium , or high.

COVID-19 Community Levels can help communities and individuals make decisions based on their local context and their unique needs. Community vaccination coverage and other local information, like early alerts from surveillance, such as through wastewater or the number of emergency department visits for COVID-19, when available, can also inform decision making for health officials and individuals. See https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/science/community-levels.html for more information.

Visit CDC’s COVID Data Tracker County View* to learn more about the individual metrics used for CDC’s COVID-19 community level in your county. Please note that county-level data are not available for territories. Go to https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#county-view.

For the most accurate and up-to-date data for any county or state, visit the relevant health department website. *COVID Data Tracker may display data that differ from state and local websites. This can be due to differences in how data were collected, how metrics were calculated, or the timing of web updates.

Reporting of Aggregate Case and Death Count data was discontinued May 11, 2023, with the expiration of the COVID-19 public health emergency declaration. Although these data will continue to be publicly available, this dataset will no longer be updated.

Weekly COVID-19 Community Levels (CCLs) have been replaced with levels of COVID-19 hospital admission rates (low, medium, or high) which demonstrate >99% concordance by county during February 2022–March 2023. For more information on the latest COVID-19 status levels in your area and hospital admission rates, visit United States COVID-19 Hospitalizations, Deaths, and Emergency Visits by Geographic Area.

This archived public use dataset contains historical case and percent positivity data updated weekly for all available counties and jurisdictions. Each week, the dataset was refreshed to capture any historical updates. Please note, percent positivity data may be incomplete for the most recent time period.

This archived public use dataset contains weekly community transmission levels data for all available counties and jurisdictions since October 20, 2022. The dataset was appended to contain the most recent week's data as originally posted on COVID Data Tracker. Historical corrections are not made to these data if new case or testing information become available. A separate archived file is made available here (: Weekly COVID-19 County Level of Community Transmission Historical Changes) if historically updated data are desired.

Related data CDC provides the public with two active versions of COVID-19 county-level community transmission level data: this dataset with the levels as originally posted (Weekly Originally Posted dataset), updated weekly with the most recent week’s data since October 20, 2022, and a historical dataset with the county-level transmission data from January 22, 2020 (Weekly Historical Changes dataset).

Methods for calculating county level of community transmission indicator The County Level of Community Transmission indicator uses two metrics: (1) total new COVID-19 cases per 100,000 persons in the last 7 days and (2) percentage of positive SARS-CoV-2 diagnostic nucleic acid amplification tests (NAAT) in the last 7 days. For each of these metrics, CDC classifies transmission values as low, moderate, substantial, or high (below and here). If the values for each of these two metrics differ (e.g., one indicates moderate and the other low), then the higher of the two should be used for decision-making.

CDC core metrics of and thresholds for community transmission levels of SARS-CoV-2 Total New Case Rate Metric: "New cases per 100,000 persons in the past 7 days" is calculated by adding the number of new cases in the county (or other administrative level) in the last 7 days divided by the population in the county (or other administrative level) and multiplying by 100,000. "New cases per 100,000 persons in the past 7 days" is considered to have a transmission level of Low (0-9.99); Moderate (10.00-49.99); Substantial (50.00-99.99); and High (greater than or equal to 100.00).

Test Percent Positivity Metric: "Percentage of positive NAAT in the past 7 days" is calculated by dividing the number of positive tests in the county (or other administrative level) during the last 7 days by the total number of tests conducted

The New York Times is releasing a series of data files with cumulative counts of coronavirus cases in the United States, at the state and county level, over time. We are compiling this time series data from state and local governments and health departments in an attempt to provide a complete record of the ongoing outbreak.

Since the first reported coronavirus case in Washington State on Jan. 21, 2020, The Times has tracked cases of coronavirus in real time as they were identified after testing. Because of the widespread shortage of testing, however, the data is necessarily limited in the picture it presents of the outbreak.

We have used this data to power our maps and reporting tracking the outbreak, and it is now being made available to the public in response to requests from researchers, scientists and government officials who would like access to the data to better understand the outbreak.

The data begins with the first reported coronavirus case in Washington State on Jan. 21, 2020. We will publish regular updates to the data in this repository.

Updates

• Notice of data discontinuation: Since the start of the pandemic, AP has reported case and death counts from data provided by Johns Hopkins University. Johns Hopkins University has announced that they will stop their daily data collection efforts after March 10. As Johns Hopkins stops providing data, the AP will also stop collecting daily numbers for COVID cases and deaths. The HHS and CDC now collect and visualize key metrics for the pandemic. AP advises using those resources when reporting on the pandemic going forward.

  • CDC Weekly case and death counts (national and state level)
  • CDC County level cases and deaths
  • HHS New hospital admissions
  • CDC NowCast COVID variant proportions (national and regional level)

• April 9, 2020

  • The population estimate data for New York County, NY has been updated to include all five New York City counties (Kings County, Queens County, Bronx County, Richmond County and New York County). This has been done to match the Johns Hopkins COVID-19 data, which aggregates counts for the five New York City counties to New York County.

• April 20, 2020

  • Johns Hopkins death totals in the US now include confirmed and probable deaths in accordance with CDC guidelines as of April 14. One significant result of this change was an increase of more than 3,700 deaths in the New York City count. This change will likely result in increases for death counts elsewhere as well. The AP does not alter the Johns Hopkins source data, so probable deaths are included in this dataset as well.

• April 29, 2020

  • The AP is now providing timeseries data for counts of COVID-19 cases and deaths. The raw counts are provided here unaltered, along with a population column with Census ACS-5 estimates and calculated daily case and death rates per 100,000 people. Please read the updated caveats section for more information.

• September 1st, 2020

  • Johns Hopkins is now providing counts for the five New York City counties individually.

• February 12, 2021

  • The Ohio Department of Health recently announced that as many as 4,000 COVID-19 deaths may have been underreported through the state’s reporting system, and that the "daily reported death counts will be high for a two to three-day period."
  • Because deaths data will be anomalous for consecutive days, we have chosen to freeze Ohio's rolling average for daily deaths at the last valid measure until Johns Hopkins is able to back-distribute the data. The raw daily death counts, as reported by Johns Hopkins and including the backlogged death data, will still be present in the new_deaths column.

• February 16, 2021

  - Johns Hopkins has reconciled Ohio's historical deaths data with the state.

  Overview

The AP is using data collected by the Johns Hopkins University Center for Systems Science and Engineering as our source for outbreak caseloads and death counts for the United States and globally.

The Hopkins data is available at the county level in the United States. The AP has paired this data with population figures and county rural/urban designations, and has calculated caseload and death rates per 100,000 people. Be aware that caseloads may reflect the availability of tests -- and the ability to turn around test results quickly -- rather than actual disease spread or true infection rates.

This data is from the Hopkins dashboard that is updated regularly throughout the day. Like all organizations dealing with data, Hopkins is constantly refining and cleaning up their feed, so there may be brief moments where data does not appear correctly. At this link, you’ll find the Hopkins daily data reports, and a clean version of their feed.

The AP is updating this dataset hourly at 45 minutes past the hour.

To learn more about AP's data journalism capabilities for publishers, corporations and financial institutions, go here or email kromano@ap.org.

Queries

Use AP's queries to filter the data or to join to other datasets we've made available to help cover the coronavirus pandemic

• Filter cases by state here

• Rank states by their status as current hotspots. Calculates the 7-day rolling average of new cases per capita in each state: https://data.world/associatedpress/johns-hopkins-coronavirus-case-tracker/workspace/query?queryid=481e82a4-1b2f-41c2-9ea1-d91aa4b3b1ac

• Find recent hotspots within your state by running a query to calculate the 7-day rolling average of new cases by capita in each county: https://data.world/associatedpress/johns-hopkins-coronavirus-case-tracker/workspace/query?queryid=b566f1db-3231-40fe-8099-311909b7b687&showTemplatePreview=true

• Join county-level case data to an earlier dataset released by AP on local hospital capacity here. To find out more about the hospital capacity dataset, see the full details.

• Pull the 100 counties with the highest per-capita confirmed cases here

• Rank all the counties by the highest per-capita rate of new cases in the past 7 days here. Be aware that because this ranks per-capita caseloads, very small counties may rise to the very top, so take into account raw caseload figures as well.

Interactive

The AP has designed an interactive map to track COVID-19 cases reported by Johns Hopkins.

@(https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/nRyaf/15/)

Interactive Embed Code

<iframe title="USA counties (2018) choropleth map Mapping COVID-19 cases by county" aria-describedby="" id="datawrapper-chart-nRyaf" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/nRyaf/10/" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" style="width: 0; min-width: 100% !important;" height="400"></iframe><script type="text/javascript">(function() {'use strict';window.addEventListener('message', function(event) {if (typeof event.data['datawrapper-height'] !== 'undefined') {for (var chartId in event.data['datawrapper-height']) {var iframe = document.getElementById('datawrapper-chart-' + chartId) || document.querySelector("iframe[src*='" + chartId + "']");if (!iframe) {continue;}iframe.style.height = event.data['datawrapper-height'][chartId] + 'px';}}});})();</script>

Caveats

• This data represents the number of cases and deaths reported by each state and has been collected by Johns Hopkins from a number of sources cited on their website.
• In some cases, deaths or cases of people who've crossed state lines -- either to receive treatment or because they became sick and couldn't return home while traveling -- are reported in a state they aren't currently in, because of state reporting rules.
• In some states, there are a number of cases not assigned to a specific county -- for those cases, the county name is "unassigned to a single county"
• This data should be credited to Johns Hopkins University's COVID-19 tracking project. The AP is simply making it available here for ease of use for reporters and members.
• Caseloads may reflect the availability of tests -- and the ability to turn around test results quickly -- rather than actual disease spread or true infection rates.
• Population estimates at the county level are drawn from 2014-18 5-year estimates from the American Community Survey.
• The Urban/Rural classification scheme is from the Center for Disease Control and Preventions's National Center for Health Statistics. It puts each county into one of six categories -- from Large Central Metro to Non-Core -- according to population and other characteristics. More details about the classifications can be found here.

Johns Hopkins timeseries data - Johns Hopkins pulls data regularly to update their dashboard. Once a day, around 8pm EDT, Johns Hopkins adds the counts for all areas they cover to the timeseries file. These counts are snapshots of the latest cumulative counts provided by the source on that day. This can lead to inconsistencies if a source updates their historical data for accuracy, either increasing or decreasing the latest cumulative count. - Johns Hopkins periodically edits their historical timeseries data for accuracy. They provide a file documenting all errors in their timeseries files that they have identified and fixed here

Attribution

This data should be credited to Johns Hopkins University COVID-19 tracking project

Coronavirus (COVID-19) Data in the United States

[ U.S. State-Level Data (Raw CSV) | U.S. County-Level Data (Raw CSV) ]

The New York Times is releasing a series of data files with cumulative counts of coronavirus cases in the United States, at the state and county level, over time. We are compiling this time series data from state and local governments and health departments in an attempt to provide a complete record of the ongoing outbreak.

Since late January, The Times has tracked cases of coronavirus in real-time as they were identified after testing. Because of the widespread shortage of testing, however, the data is necessarily limited in the picture it presents of the outbreak.

We have used this data to power our maps and reporting tracking the outbreak, and it is now being made available to the public in response to requests from researchers, scientists, and government officials who would like access to the data to better understand the outbreak.

The data begins with the first reported coronavirus case in Washington State on Jan. 21, 2020. We will publish regular updates to the data in this repository.

United States Data

Data on cumulative coronavirus cases and deaths can be found in two files for states and counties.

Each row of data reports cumulative counts based on our best reporting up to the moment we publish an update. We do our best to revise earlier entries in the data when we receive new information.

Both files contain FIPS codes, a standard geographic identifier, to make it easier for an analyst to combine this data with other data sets like a map file or population data.

Download all the data or clone this repository by clicking the green "Clone or download" button above.

State-Level Data

State-level data can be found in the states.csv file. (Raw CSV file here.)

date,state,fips,cases,deaths
2020-01-21,Washington,53,1,0
...

County-Level Data

County-level data can be found in the counties.csv file. (Raw CSV file here.)

date,county,state,fips,cases,deaths
2020-01-21,Snohomish,Washington,53061,1,0
...

In some cases, the geographies where cases are reported do not map to standard county boundaries. See the list of geographic exceptions for more detail on these.

Methodology and Definitions

The data is the product of dozens of journalists working across several time zones to monitor news conferences, analyze data releases and seek clarification from public officials on how they categorize cases.

It is also a response to a fragmented American public health system in which overwhelmed public servants at the state, county and territorial levels have sometimes struggled to report information accurately, consistently and speedily. On several occasions, officials have corrected information hours or days after first reporting it. At times, cases have disappeared from a local government database, or officials have moved a patient first identified in one state or county to another, often with no explanation. In those instances, which have become more common as the number of cases has grown, our team has made every effort to update the data to reflect the most current, accurate information while ensuring that every known case is counted.

When the information is available, we count patients where they are being treated, not necessarily where they live.

In most instances, the process of recording cases has been straightforward. But because of the patchwork of reporting methods for this data across more than 50 state and territorial governments and hundreds of local health departments, our journalists sometimes had to make difficult interpretations about how to count and record cases.

For those reasons, our data will in some cases not exactly match the information reported by states and counties. Those differences include these cases: When the federal government arranged flights to the United States for Americans exposed to the coronavirus in China and Japan, our team recorded those cases in the states where the patients subsequently were treated, even though local health departments generally did not. When a resident of Florida died in Los Angeles, we recorded her death as having occurred in California rather than Florida, though officials in Florida counted her case in their records. And when officials in some states reported new cases without immediately identifying where the patients were being treated, we attempted to add information about their locations later, once it became available.

• Confirmed Cases

Confirmed cases are patients who test positive for the coronavirus. We consider a case confirmed when it is reported by a federal, state, territorial or local government agency.

• Dates

For each date, we show the cumulative number of confirmed cases and deaths as reported that day in that county or state. All cases and deaths are counted on the date they are first announced.

• Counties

In some instances, we report data from multiple counties or other non-county geographies as a single county. For instance, we report a single value for New York City, comprising the cases for New York, Kings, Queens, Bronx and Richmond Counties. In these instances, the FIPS code field will be empty. (We may assign FIPS codes to these geographies in the future.) See the list of geographic exceptions.

Cities like St. Louis and Baltimore that are administered separately from an adjacent county of the same name are counted separately.

• “Unknown” Counties

Many state health departments choose to report cases separately when the patient’s county of residence is unknown or pending determination. In these instances, we record the county name as “Unknown.” As more information about these cases becomes available, the cumulative number of cases in “Unknown” counties may fluctuate.

Sometimes, cases are first reported in one county and then moved to another county. As a result, the cumulative number of cases may change for a given county.

Geographic Exceptions

• New York City

All cases for the five boroughs of New York City (New York, Kings, Queens, Bronx and Richmond counties) are assigned to a single area called New York City.

• Kansas City, Mo.

Four counties (Cass, Clay, Jackson, and Platte) overlap the municipality of Kansas City, Mo. The cases and deaths that we show for these four counties are only for the portions exclusive of Kansas City. Cases and deaths for Kansas City are reported as their line.

• Alameda, Calif.

Counts for Alameda County include cases and deaths from Berkeley and the Grand Princess cruise ship.

• Chicago

All cases and deaths for Chicago are reported as part of Cook County.

License and Attribution

In general, we are making this data publicly available for broad, noncommercial public use including by medical and public health researchers, policymakers, analysts and local news media.

If you use this data, you must attribute it to “The New York Times” in any publication. If you would like a more expanded description of the data, you could say “Data from The New York Times, based on reports from state and local health agencies.”

If you use it in an online presentation, we would appreciate it if you would link to our U.S. tracking page at https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-cases.html.

If you use this data, please let us know at covid-data@nytimes.com and indicate if you would be willing to talk to a reporter about your research.

See our LICENSE for the full terms of use for this data.

This license is co-extensive with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International license, and licensees should refer to that license (CC BY-NC) if they have questions about the scope of the license.

Contact Us

If you have questions about the data or licensing conditions, please contact us at:

covid-data@nytimes.com

Contributors

Mitch Smith, Karen Yourish, Sarah Almukhtar, Keith Collins, Danielle Ivory, and Amy Harmon have been leading our U.S. data collection efforts.

Data has also been compiled by Jordan Allen, Jeff Arnold, Aliza Aufrichtig, Mike Baker, Robin Berjon, Matthew Bloch, Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs, Maddie Burakoff, Christopher Calabrese, Andrew Chavez, Robert Chiarito, Carmen Cincotti, Alastair Coote, Matt Craig, John Eligon, Tiff Fehr, Andrew Fischer, Matt Furber, Rich Harris, Lauryn Higgins, Jake Holland, Will Houp, Jon Huang, Danya Issawi, Jacob LaGesse, Hugh Mandeville, Patricia Mazzei, Allison McCann, Jesse McKinley, Miles McKinley, Sarah Mervosh, Andrea Michelson, Blacki Migliozzi, Steven Moity, Richard A. Oppel Jr., Jugal K. Patel, Nina Pavlich, Azi Paybarah, Sean Plambeck, Carrie Price, Scott Reinhard, Thomas Rivas, Michael Robles, Alison Saldanha, Alex Schwartz, Libby Seline, Shelly Seroussi, Rachel Shorey, Anjali Singhvi, Charlie Smart, Ben Smithgall, Steven Speicher, Michael Strickland, Albert Sun, Thu Trinh, Tracey Tully, Maura Turcotte, Miles Watkins, Jeremy White, Josh Williams, and Jin Wu.

Context

There's a story behind every dataset and here's your opportunity to share yours.# Coronavirus (Covid-19) Data in the United States

[ U.S. State-Level Data ([Raw

As global communities responded to COVID-19, we heard from public health officials that the same type of aggregated, anonymized insights we use in products such as Google Maps would be helpful as they made critical decisions to combat COVID-19. These Community Mobility Reports aimed to provide insights into what changed in response to policies aimed at combating COVID-19. The reports charted movement trends over time by geography, across different categories of places such as retail and recreation, groceries and pharmacies, parks, transit stations, workplaces, and residential.

Outside of China, the country most affected by the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) was the Republic of Korea, as of February 26, 2020. The most likely place of exposure had been determined for around half of the cases in the country, while the other half remained under investigation. Around 20 people had sustained transmission from international locations, while approximately 600 people had been exposed to the virus while in the country.

Lessons learned from SARS outbreak COVID-19 is caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The virus is highly transmissible and is being spread through the air in tiny droplets expelled by someone who is coughing, sneezing, or speaking. Coronaviruses are a large family of viruses, and this novel coronavirus shares many similarities with the SARS virus that was first identified in 2002. The SARS-CoV virus was also transmitted through the air, and people would become infected if they breathed in the droplets or touched a surface where droplets had recently landed.

What can people do to protect themselves? The best way to prevent illness is to avoid being exposed to the virus. This is best achieved by following everyday preventive actions: wash your hands regularly with soap and water, keep a distance between yourself and others, and cover your own mouth and nose when you are coughing and sneezing. The use of face masks in public places is also encouraged to reduce the risk of transmission.

As of November 24, 2024 there were over 274 million confirmed cases of coronavirus (COVID-19) across the whole of Europe since the first confirmed cases in France in January 2020. France has been the worst affected country in Europe with 39,028,437 confirmed cases, followed by Germany with 38,437,756 cases. Italy and the UK have approximately 26.8 million and 25 million cases respectively. For further information about the coronavirus pandemic, please visit our dedicated Facts and Figures page.

Discover the latest resources, maps and information about the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak in your community

Only 14 percent of the respondents in Romania were convinced that the majority of people in their neighborhood meet the requirements set by the authorities during the coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19). In contrast, 24 percent were convinced that people in their region did not comply with the measures imposed in 2020.

For further information about the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, please visit our dedicated Facts and Figures page.

Discover the latest resources, maps and information about the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak in your community

As of May 2, 2023, the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) had been confirmed in almost every country in the world. The virus had infected over 687 million people worldwide, and the number of deaths had reached almost 6.87 million. The most severely affected countries include the U.S., India, and Brazil.

COVID-19: background information COVID-19 is a novel coronavirus that had not previously been identified in humans. The first case was detected in the Hubei province of China at the end of December 2019. The virus is highly transmissible and coughing and sneezing are the most common forms of transmission, which is similar to the outbreak of the SARS coronavirus that began in 2002 and was thought to have spread via cough and sneeze droplets expelled into the air by infected persons.

Naming the coronavirus disease Coronaviruses are a group of viruses that can be transmitted between animals and people, causing illnesses that may range from the common cold to more severe respiratory syndromes. In February 2020, the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses and the World Health Organization announced official names for both the virus and the disease it causes: SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19, respectively. The name of the disease is derived from the words corona, virus, and disease, while the number 19 represents the year that it emerged.

The new COVID-19 Health, Racial, and Economic Equity data gallery helps you start understanding and addressing inequity in your community. The data is now available on the Esri COVID-19 GIS Hub. This gallery contains a collection of Esri maps, data, and apps that can help guide decisions around health, racial, and economic equity during COVID-19 and beyond. _Communities around the world are taking strides in mitigating the threat that COVID-19 (coronavirus) poses. Geography and location analysis have a crucial role in better understanding this evolving pandemic.When you need help quickly, Esri can provide data, software, configurable applications, and technical support for your emergency GIS operations. Use GIS to rapidly access and visualize mission-critical information. Get the information you need quickly, in a way that’s easy to understand, to make better decisions during a crisis.Esri’s Disaster Response Program (DRP) assists with disasters worldwide as part of our corporate citizenship. We support response and relief efforts with GIS technology and expertise.More information...

ArcGIS Technology for Mapping COVID-19 (Esri Training).Communities around the world are taking strides in mitigating the threat that COVID-19 (coronavirus) poses. Geography and location analysis have a crucial role in better understanding this evolving pandemic. This plan will teach you the core ArcGIS technology necessary to understand, prepare for, and respond to COVID-19 in your community or organization.More information about Esri training..._Communities around the world are taking strides in mitigating the threat that COVID-19 (coronavirus) poses. Geography and location analysis have a crucial role in better understanding this evolving pandemic.When you need help quickly, Esri can provide data, software, configurable applications, and technical support for your emergency GIS operations. Use GIS to rapidly access and visualize mission-critical information. Get the information you need quickly, in a way that’s easy to understand, to make better decisions during a crisis.Esri’s Disaster Response Program (DRP) assists with disasters worldwide as part of our corporate citizenship. We support response and relief efforts with GIS technology and expertise.More information...

Overview

The Marshall Project, the nonprofit investigative newsroom dedicated to the U.S. criminal justice system, has partnered with The Associated Press to compile data on the prevalence of COVID-19 infection in prisons across the country. The Associated Press is sharing this data as the most comprehensive current national source of COVID-19 outbreaks in state and federal prisons.

Lawyers, criminal justice reform advocates and families of the incarcerated have worried about what was happening in prisons across the nation as coronavirus began to take hold in the communities outside. Data collected by The Marshall Project and AP shows that hundreds of thousands of prisoners, workers, correctional officers and staff have caught the illness as prisons became the center of some of the country’s largest outbreaks. And thousands of people — most of them incarcerated — have died.

In December, as COVID-19 cases spiked across the U.S., the news organizations also shared cumulative rates of infection among prison populations, to better gauge the total effects of the pandemic on prison populations. The analysis found that by mid-December, one in five state and federal prisoners in the United States had tested positive for the coronavirus -- a rate more than four times higher than the general population.

This data, which is updated weekly, is an effort to track how those people have been affected and where the crisis has hit the hardest.

Methodology and Caveats

The data tracks the number of COVID-19 tests administered to people incarcerated in all state and federal prisons, as well as the staff in those facilities. It is collected on a weekly basis by Marshall Project and AP reporters who contact each prison agency directly and verify published figures with officials.

Each week, the reporters ask every prison agency for the total number of coronavirus tests administered to its staff members and prisoners, the cumulative number who tested positive among staff and prisoners, and the numbers of deaths for each group.

The time series data is aggregated to the system level; there is one record for each prison agency on each date of collection. Not all departments could provide data for the exact date requested, and the data indicates the date for the figures.

To estimate the rate of infection among prisoners, we collected population data for each prison system before the pandemic, roughly in mid-March, in April, June, July, August, September and October. Beginning the week of July 28, we updated all prisoner population numbers, reflecting the number of incarcerated adults in state or federal prisons. Prior to that, population figures may have included additional populations, such as prisoners housed in other facilities, which were not captured in our COVID-19 data. In states with unified prison and jail systems, we include both detainees awaiting trial and sentenced prisoners.

To estimate the rate of infection among prison employees, we collected staffing numbers for each system. Where current data was not publicly available, we acquired other numbers through our reporting, including calling agencies or from state budget documents. In six states, we were unable to find recent staffing figures: Alaska, Hawaii, Kentucky, Maryland, Montana, Utah.

To calculate the cumulative COVID-19 impact on prisoner and prison worker populations, we aggregated prisoner and staff COVID case and death data up through Dec. 15. Because population snapshots do not account for movement in and out of prisons since March, and because many systems have significantly slowed the number of new people being sent to prison, it’s difficult to estimate the total number of people who have been held in a state system since March. To be conservative, we calculated our rates of infection using the largest prisoner population snapshots we had during this time period.

As with all COVID-19 data, our understanding of the spread and impact of the virus is limited by the availability of testing. Epidemiology and public health experts say that aside from a few states that have recently begun aggressively testing in prisons, it is likely that there are more cases of COVID-19 circulating undetected in facilities. Sixteen prison systems, including the Federal Bureau of Prisons, would not release information about how many prisoners they are testing.

Corrections departments in Indiana, Kansas, Montana, North Dakota and Wisconsin report coronavirus testing and case data for juvenile facilities; West Virginia reports figures for juvenile facilities and jails. For consistency of comparison with other state prison systems, we removed those facilities from our data that had been included prior to July 28. For these states we have also removed staff data. Similarly, Pennsylvania’s coronavirus data includes testing and cases for those who have been released on parole. We removed these tests and cases for prisoners from the data prior to July 28. The staff cases remain.

About the Data

There are four tables in this data:

• covid_prison_cases.csv contains weekly time series data on tests, infections and deaths in prisons. The first dates in the table are on March 26. Any questions that a prison agency could not or would not answer are left blank.

• prison_populations.csv contains snapshots of the population of people incarcerated in each of these prison systems for whom data on COVID testing and cases are available. This varies by state and may not always be the entire number of people incarcerated in each system. In some states, it may include other populations, such as those on parole or held in state-run jails. This data is primarily for use in calculating rates of testing and infection, and we would not recommend using these numbers to compare the change in how many people are being held in each prison system.

• staff_populations.csv contains a one-time, recent snapshot of the headcount of workers for each prison agency, collected as close to April 15 as possible.

• covid_prison_rates.csv contains the rates of cases and deaths for prisoners. There is one row for every state and federal prison system and an additional row with the National totals.

Queries

The Associated Press and The Marshall Project have created several queries to help you use this data:

Get your state's prison COVID data: Provides each week's data from just your state and calculates a cases-per-100000-prisoners rate, a deaths-per-100000-prisoners rate, a cases-per-100000-workers rate and a deaths-per-100000-workers rate here

Rank all systems' most recent data by cases per 100,000 prisoners here

Find what percentage of your state's total cases and deaths -- as reported by Johns Hopkins University -- occurred within the prison system here

Attribution

In stories, attribute this data to: “According to an analysis of state prison cases by The Marshall Project, a nonprofit investigative newsroom dedicated to the U.S. criminal justice system, and The Associated Press.”

Contributors

Many reporters and editors at The Marshall Project and The Associated Press contributed to this data, including: Katie Park, Tom Meagher, Weihua Li, Gabe Isman, Cary Aspinwall, Keri Blakinger, Jake Bleiberg, Andrew R. Calderón, Maurice Chammah, Andrew DeMillo, Eli Hager, Jamiles Lartey, Claudia Lauer, Nicole Lewis, Humera Lodhi, Colleen Long, Joseph Neff, Michelle Pitcher, Alysia Santo, Beth Schwartzapfel, Damini Sharma, Colleen Slevin, Christie Thompson, Abbie VanSickle, Adria Watson, Andrew Welsh-Huggins.

Questions

If you have questions about the data, please email The Marshall Project at info+covidtracker@themarshallproject.org or file a Github issue.

To learn more about AP's data journalism capabilities for publishers, corporations and financial institutions, go here or email kromano@ap.org.

As of March 10, 2023, the death rate from COVID-19 in the state of New York was 397 per 100,000 people. New York is one of the states with the highest number of COVID-19 cases.

2019 Novel Coronavirus COVID-19 (2019-nCoV) Visual Dashboard and Map:
https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6

• Confirmed Cases by Country/Region/Sovereignty
• Confirmed Cases by Province/State/Dependency
• Deaths
• Recovered

Downloadable data:
https://github.com/CSSEGISandData/COVID-19

Additional Information about the Visual Dashboard:
https://systems.jhu.edu/research/public-health/ncov

Discover the latest resources, maps and information about the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak in your community

What you, and what communities can do to lower the spread of COVID-19 in settings including social services, workplaces, outdoors, community, religious, transport and remote and Indigenous communities.