We collect, cross-check, and publish COVID-19 data from 56 US states and territories in three main areas: testing, patient outcomes, and, via The COVID Racial Data Tracker, racial and ethnic demographic information. We compile these numbers to provide the most complete picture we can assemble of the US COVID-19 testing effort and the outbreak’s effects on the people and communities it strikes.
If you’d like to use our data, whether it’s for a specialized project or just to better understand COVID-19 in the US, here are a few things you should know right away.
- We update the full dataset each day between about 5:30pm and 7pm Eastern time, with limited additional updates as new information arrives.
- All our data comes from state and territory public health authorities or official statements from state officials. Not all states report all data, which means we can’t, either. You can read more about our data sources, see what data states provide, or learn how we grade their reporting performance.)
- We do not automatically scrape data or attempt to offer a live feed. Our data is gathered and double-checked by humans, and we emphasize accuracy and context over speed, so our count will often be behind automated trackers.
- Many data sources, like the excellent JHU Tracker and New York Times Coronavirus in the US tracker, focus on case counts (positive tests) and deaths. We started this project to get more complete testing data, including total tests, to provide vital context for case and death counts. (Learn why complete testing data is so important.)
- While we provide more testing and outcomes information than most other sources, we don’t attempt to compile this data at the county or zip-code level, because the high-resolution data we’re seeking hasn’t been available in any consistent way at levels below that of the state/territory. This may change over time, but that’s where we are today.
Our data is licensed CC-BY-NC with several specific commercial uses authorized.