Weekly 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
More Data on COVID-19
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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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: Weekly 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://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260401-063313/grapher/weekly-covid-deaths-per-million-people.html [online resource] (archived on April 1, 2026).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 (2026); Population based on various sources (2024) – with minor processing by Our World in DataFull citation
World Health Organization (2026); Population based on various sources (2024) – with minor processing by Our World in Data. “Weekly 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 April 1, 2026 from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20260401-063313/grapher/weekly-covid-deaths-per-million-people.html (archived on April 1, 2026).Download
Quick download
Download the data shown in this chart as a ZIP file containing a CSV file, metadata in JSON format, and a README. The CSV file can be opened in Excel, Google Sheets, and other data analysis tools.
Data API
Use these URLs to programmatically access this chart's data and configure your requests with the options below. Our documentation provides more information on how to use the API, and you can find a few code examples below.
Data URL (CSV format)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/weekly-covid-deaths-per-million-people.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=falseMetadata URL (JSON format)
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/weekly-covid-deaths-per-million-people.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=falseExcel / Google Sheets
=IMPORTDATA("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/weekly-covid-deaths-per-million-people.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")Python with Pandas
import pandas as pd
import requests
# Fetch the data.
df = pd.read_csv("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/weekly-covid-deaths-per-million-people.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false", storage_options = {'User-Agent': 'Our World In Data data fetch/1.0'})
# Fetch the metadata
metadata = requests.get("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/weekly-covid-deaths-per-million-people.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false").json()R
library(jsonlite)
# Fetch the data
df <- read.csv("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/weekly-covid-deaths-per-million-people.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")
# Fetch the metadata
metadata <- fromJSON("https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/weekly-covid-deaths-per-million-people.metadata.json?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false")Stata
import delimited "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/weekly-covid-deaths-per-million-people.csv?v=1&csvType=full&useColumnShortNames=false", encoding("utf-8") clear