Biweekly confirmed COVID-19 deaths per million people

What you should know about this indicator
- The actual death toll from COVID-19 is likely to be higher than the number of confirmed deaths – this is due to limited testing, poorly functioning death registries, challenges in determining the cause of death, and disruptions during the pandemic. The difference between reported confirmed deaths and actual deaths varies between countries.
- Excess mortality is a more comprehensive measure of the total mortality impact of the pandemic, compared to the number of confirmed COVID-19 deaths. This is because it captures not only confirmed deaths, but also COVID-19 deaths that were not accurately diagnosed.
- COVID-19 deaths may be recorded in different ways between countries (e.g., some countries may only count hospital deaths, whilst others also include deaths in homes).
- Data are presented by the date of reporting rather than symptom onset, and retrospective updates by countries can sometimes lead to sudden spikes or even negative values.
- WHO encourages weekly reporting to reduce inconsistencies in daily reporting frequencies across countries and help minimize the risk of misinterpreting periods of zero reporting as zero deaths.
- There are often large differences in the population size between countries. Therefore, to compare deaths between countries, it is more insightful to look at the number of confirmed deaths as a rate per million people.
- We provide more detail on these points in Deaths from COVID-19: background.
Related research and writing
Sources and processing
This data is based on the following sources
How we process data at Our World in Data
All data and visualizations on Our World in Data rely on data sourced from one or several original data providers. Preparing this original data involves several processing steps. Depending on the data, this can include standardizing country names and world region definitions, converting units, calculating derived indicators such as per capita measures, as well as adding or adapting metadata such as the name or the description given to an indicator.
At the link below you can find a detailed description of the structure of our data pipeline, including links to all the code used to prepare data across Our World in Data.
Notes on our processing step for this indicator
This indicator is estimated by normalizing by population. We have used daily population estimates, which leads to changes in the denominator between datapoints from different days. For instance, the denominator for January 1st will be different to the one on January 2nd.
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- All data produced by third-party providers and made available by Our World in Data are subject to the license terms from the original providers. Our work would not be possible without the data providers we rely on, so we ask you to always cite them appropriately (see below). This is crucial to allow data providers to continue doing their work, enhancing, maintaining and updating valuable data.
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Citations
How to cite this page
To cite this page overall, including any descriptions, FAQs or explanations of the data authored by Our World in Data, please use the following citation:
“Data Page: Biweekly confirmed COVID-19 deaths per million people”, part of the following publication: Edouard Mathieu, Hannah Ritchie, Lucas Rodés-Guirao, Cameron Appel, Daniel Gavrilov, Charlie Giattino, Joe Hasell, Bobbie Macdonald, Saloni Dattani, Diana Beltekian, Esteban Ortiz-Ospina and Max Roser (2020) - “COVID-19 Pandemic”. Data adapted from World Health Organization, Various sources. Retrieved from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/biweekly-covid-deaths-per-million-people [online resource]
How to cite this data
In-line citationIf you have limited space (e.g. in data visualizations), you can use this abbreviated in-line citation:
World Health Organization (2025); Population based on various sources (2024) – with major processing by Our World in Data
Full citation
World Health Organization (2025); Population based on various sources (2024) – with major processing by Our World in Data. “Biweekly confirmed COVID-19 deaths per million people” [dataset]. World Health Organization, “COVID-19 Dashboard WHO COVID-19 Dashboard - Daily cases and deaths”; Various sources, “Population” [original data]. Retrieved February 15, 2025 from https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/biweekly-covid-deaths-per-million-people