Abstract (en): The National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS) collects data on violent deaths, i.e., suicides, homicides, and legal intervention, including terrorism-related incidents. The system also includes some other types of deaths, namely deaths due to undetermined intent and unintentional deaths due to firearms. One of the main reasons for including these types of deaths is that there is overlap in how these deaths are coded. For example, a particular poisoning case may be classified as an undetermined death in one state, but in a neighboring state, the same case may be coded as a suicide or an unintentional poisoning. NVDRS is an incident-based system that collects data from different data sources, including death certificates, coroner and medical examiner records, police reports, crime lab data, and child fatality review records. The system collects data on a violent incident, the deaths belonging to that incident, the injury mechanisms leading to death, and the alleged perpetrators (suspects) involved in the violent incident. The relationship of the victim to the suspect is also recorded, as are the relationships of each person to the injury mechanisms included. State health departments participating in NVDRS typically identify relevant violent deaths as their death certificates are filed and then establish the details of the cases from medical examiner, coroner, and law enforcement records. Data collection is ongoing as the source documents from the different data providers become available at different times and intervals. The data represent the violent incidents that occurred between January and December of that data year as submitted by the participating states. ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection: Created online analysis version with question text.; Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.. The 2004 data year includes information from 13 states (Alaska, Colorado, Georgia, Maryland, Massachusetts, North Carolina, New Jersey, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Virginia, and Wisconsin). These states combined accounted for 23.4 percent of the 2003 United States population, but 22.7 percent of the suicides and 21.9 percent of the homicides in the United States in 2002. Smallest Geographic Unit: state

Note: Reporting of new COVID-19 Case Surveillance data will be discontinued July 1, 2024, to align with the process of removing SARS-CoV-2 infections (COVID-19 cases) from the list of nationally notifiable diseases. Although these data will continue to be publicly available, the dataset will no longer be updated.

Authorizations to collect certain public health data expired at the end of the U.S. public health emergency declaration on May 11, 2023. The following jurisdictions discontinued COVID-19 case notifications to CDC: Iowa (11/8/21), Kansas (5/12/23), Kentucky (1/1/24), Louisiana (10/31/23), New Hampshire (5/23/23), and Oklahoma (5/2/23). Please note that these jurisdictions will not routinely send new case data after the dates indicated. As of 7/13/23, case notifications from Oregon will only include pediatric cases resulting in death.

This case surveillance public use dataset has 19 elements for all COVID-19 cases shared with CDC and includes demographics, geography (county and state of residence), any exposure history, disease severity indicators and outcomes, and presence of any underlying medical conditions and risk behaviors.

Currently, CDC provides the public with three versions of COVID-19 case surveillance line-listed data: this 19 data element dataset with geography, a 12 data element public use dataset, and a 33 data element restricted access dataset.

The following apply to the public use datasets and the restricted access dataset:

• Data elements can be found on the COVID-19 case report form located at www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/downloads/pui-form.pdf.
• Data are considered provisional by CDC and are subject to change until the data are reconciled and verified with the state and territorial data providers.
• Some data are suppressed to protect individual privacy.
• Datasets will include all cases with the earliest date available in each record (date received by CDC or date related to illness/specimen collection) at least 14 days prior to the creation of the current datasets. This 14-day lag allows case reporting to be stabilized and ensure that time-dependent outcome data are accurately captured.
• Datasets are updated monthly.
• Datasets are created using CDC’s Policy on Public Health Research and Nonresearch Data Management and Access and include protections designed to protect individual privacy.
• For more information about data collection and reporting, please see https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/about-us-cases-deaths.html.
• For more information about the COVID-19 case surveillance data, please see https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/covid-data/faq-surveillance.html
  

Overview

The COVID-19 case surveillance database includes individual-level data reported to U.S. states and autonomous reporting entities, including New York City and the District of Columbia (D.C.), as well as U.S. territories and affiliates. On April 5, 2020, COVID-19 was added to the Nationally Notifiable Condition List and classified as “immediately notifiable, urgent (within 24 hours)” by a Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists (CSTE) Interim Position Statement (Interim-20-ID-01). CSTE updated the position statement on August 5, 2020, to clarify the interpretation of antigen detection tests and serologic test results within the case classification (Interim-20-ID-02). The statement also recommended that all states and territories enact laws to make COVID-19 reportable in their jurisdiction, and that jurisdictions conducting surveillance should submit case notifications to CDC. COVID-19 case surveillance data are collected by jurisdictions and reported voluntarily to CDC.

For more information: NNDSS Supports the COVID-19 Response | CDC.

COVID-19 Case Reports COVID-19 case reports are routinely submitted to CDC by public health jurisdictions using nationally standardized case reporting forms. On April 5, 2020, CSTE released an Interim Position Statement with national surveillance case definitions for COVID-19. Current versions of these case definitions are available at: https://ndc.services.cdc.gov/case-definitions/coronavirus-disease-2019-2021/. All cases reported on or after were requested to be shared by public health departments to CDC using the standardized case definitions for lab-confirmed or probable cases. On May 5, 2020, the standardized case reporting form was revised. States and territories continue to use this form.

Data are Considered Provisional

• The COVID-19 case surveillance data are dynamic; case reports can be modified at any time by the jurisdictions sharing COVID-19 data with CDC. CDC may update prior cases shared with CDC based on any updated information from jurisdictions. For instance, as new information is gathered about previously reported cases, health departments provide updated data to CDC. As more information and data become available, analyses might find changes in surveillance data and trends during a previously reported time window. Data may also be shared late with CDC due to the volume of COVID-19 cases.
• Annual finalized data: To create the final NNDSS data used in the annual tables, CDC works carefully with the reporting jurisdictions to reconcile the data received during the year until each state or territorial epidemiologist confirms that the data from their area are correct.

Access Addressing Gaps in Public Health Reporting of Race and Ethnicity for COVID-19, a report from the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists, to better understand the challenges in completing race and ethnicity data for COVID-19 and recommendations for improvement.

Data Limitations

To learn more about the limitations in using case surveillance data, visit FAQ: COVID-19 Data and Surveillance.

Data Quality Assurance Procedures

CDC’s Case Surveillance Section routinely performs data quality assurance procedures (i.e., ongoing corrections and logic checks to address data errors). To date, the following data cleaning steps have been implemented:

• Questions that have been left unanswered (blank) on the case report form are reclassified to a Missing value, if applicable to the question. For example, in the question "Was the individual hospitalized?" where the possible answer choices include "Yes," "No," or "Unknown," the blank value is recoded to "Missing" because the case report form did not include a response to the question.
• Logic checks are performed for date data. If an illogical date has been provided, CDC reviews the data with the reporting jurisdiction. For example, if a symptom onset date in the future is reported to CDC, this value is set to null until the reporting jurisdiction updates the date appropriately.
• Additional data quality processing to recode free text data is ongoing. Data on symptoms, race, ethnicity, and healthcare worker status have been prioritized.

Data Suppression

To prevent release of data that could be used to identify people, data cells are suppressed for low frequency (<11 COVID-19 case records with a given values). Suppression includes low frequency combinations of case month, geographic characteristics (county and state of residence), and demographic characteristics (sex, age group, race, and ethnicity). Suppressed values are re-coded to the NA answer option; records with data suppression are never removed.

Additional COVID-19 Data

COVID-19 data are available to the public as summary or aggregate count files, including total counts of cases and deaths by state and by county. These and other COVID-19 data are available from multiple public locations: COVID Data Tracker; United States COVID-19 Cases and Deaths by State; COVID-19 Vaccination Reporting Data Systems; and COVID-19 Death Data and Resources.

Notes:

March 1, 2022: The "COVID-19 Case Surveillance Public Use Data with Geography" will be updated on a monthly basis.

April 7, 2022: An adjustment was made to CDC’s cleaning algorithm for COVID-19 line level case notification data. An assumption in CDC's algorithm led to misclassifying deaths that were not COVID-19 related. The algorithm has since been revised, and this dataset update reflects corrected individual level information about death status for all cases collected to date.

June 25, 2024: An adjustment

Analysis of ‘United States COVID-19 Cases and Deaths by State over Time’ provided by Analyst-2 (analyst-2.ai), based on source dataset retrieved from https://catalog.data.gov/dataset/94385ab5-449a-41ff-8253-15a9f6283539 on 12 February 2022.

--- Dataset description provided by original source is as follows ---

CDC reports aggregate counts of COVID-19 cases and death numbers daily online. Data on the COVID-19 website and CDC’s COVID Data Tracker are based on these most recent numbers reported by states, territories, and other jurisdictions. This data set of “United States COVID-19 Cases and Deaths by State over Time” combines this information. However, data are dependent on jurisdictions’ timely and accurate reporting.

Separately, CDC also regularly reports provisional death certificate data from the National Vital Statistics System (NVSS) on data.cdc.gov. Details are described on the NCHS website. Reporting the number of deaths by using death certificates ultimately provides more complete information but is a longer process; therefore, these numbers will be less than the death counts on the COVID-19 website.

Accuracy of Data
CDC tracks COVID-19 illnesses, hospitalizations, and deaths to track trends, detect outbreaks, and monitor whether public health measures are working. However, counting exact numbers of COVID-19 cases is not possible. COVID-19 can cause mild illness, symptoms might not appear immediately, there are delays in reporting and testing, not everyone who is infected gets tested or seeks medical care, and there are differences in how completely states and territories report their cases.

COVID-19 is one of about 120 diseases or conditions health departments voluntarily report to CDC. State, local, and territorial public health departments verify and report cases to CDC. When there are differences between numbers of cases reported by CDC versus by health departments, data reported by health departments should be considered the most up to date. Health departments may update case data over time when they receive more complete and accurate information. The number of new cases reported each day fluctuates. There is generally less reporting on the weekends and holidays.

CDC reports death data on three other sections of the website: U.S. Cases & Deaths, COVID Data Tracker, and NCHS Provisional Death Counts. The U.S. Cases and Deaths webpages and COVID Data Tracker get their information from the same source (total case counts); however, NCHS Death Counts are based on death certificates that use information reported by physicians, medical examiners, or coroners in the cause-of-death section of each certificate. Data from each of these pages are considered provisional (not complete and pending verification) and are therefore subject to change. Counts from previous weeks are continually revised as more records are received and processed. Because not all jurisdictions report counts daily, counts may increase at different intervals.

Confirmed & Probable Counts
As of April 14, 2020, CDC case counts and death counts include both confirmed and probable cases and deaths. This change was made to reflect an interim COVID-19 position statement issued by the Council for State and Territorial Epidemiologists on April 5, 2020. The position statement included a case definition and made COVID-19 a nationally notifiable disease. Nationally notifiable disease cases are voluntarily reported to CDC by jurisdictions. Confirmed and probable case definition criteria are described here: https://wwwn.cdc.gov/nndss/conditions/coronavirus-disease-2019-covid-19/case-definition/2020/. Not all jurisdictions report probable cases and deaths to CDC. When not available to CDC, it is noted as N/A. Please note that jurisdiction

--- Original source retains full ownership of the source dataset ---

The United States Cancer Statistics (USCS) online databases in WONDER provide cancer incidence and mortality data for the United States for the years since 1999, by year, state and metropolitan areas (MSA), age group, race, ethnicity, sex, childhood cancer classifications and cancer site. Report case counts, deaths, crude and age-adjusted incidence and death rates, and 95% confidence intervals for rates. The USCS data are the official federal statistics on cancer incidence from registries having high-quality data and cancer mortality statistics for 50 states and the District of Columbia. USCS are produced by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Cancer Institute (NCI), in collaboration with the North American Association of Central Cancer Registries (NAACCR). Mortality data are provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), National Vital Statistics System (NVSS).