This post provided a daily update of COVID-19 data shared by John Hopkins University. It shows the trending lines for countries with the highest number of reported deaths and summarises key data changes up to 1 May 2020
Update: 1 May 2020. This is the last daily update in this format. As time goes on, showing unscaled counts and comparing countries because less appropriate or relevant. The main purpose was to view how the initial pandemic unfolded on a global scale
Latest data
Comparing countries from the day when at least 1,000 deaths reported per country. The count is cumulative, daily. Currently, there are three distinct curves: the USA; a tight cluster of Western European countries: Italy, Spain, France, and the UK following a very similar trajectory; and a broader cluster of other countries with a much lower growth rate but with more variation between the countries.
Data are actual counts per country. They have not been scaled to account for differences in population sizes which may penalise countries with larger populations. The reasons are discussed in the related post COVID-19: Different Strokes. There is no information regarding the accuracy of the counts being reported. Reliability may vary by country. Counts are started from the day when at least 100 deaths have been recorded per country.
Change log
1 May 2020: 2 countries added to locations list: Comoros and Tajikistan
30 April 2020: United Kingdom figure includes all non-hospital deaths recorded so far.
25, 26, 27, 28, 29 April 2020: No changes to locations list.
24 April 2020: No changes to locations list. Worldwide plot updated to compare from the day at least 1,000 deaths attributed to COVID-19..
21, 22, 23 April 2020: No changes.
20 April 2020: Worldwide chart updated to list countries with at least 300 deaths attributed to COVID-19. No countries added to locations list
19 April 2020: Japan joins list of countries with at least 200 deaths attributed to COVID-19
18 April 2020: Egypt and Dominican Republic join list of countries with at least 200 deaths attributed to COVID-19. China count for Wuhan area revised and increased by 50% to include non-hospital deaths
17 April 2020: Russia joins list of countries with at least 200 deaths attributed to COVID-19
16 April 2020: No countries added to locations list or list of countries with at least 200 deaths attributed to COVID-19.
15 April 2020: No countries added to locations list or list of countries with at least 200 deaths attributed to COVID-19. Continents charts updated to set day 1 as the day when at least 100 deaths recorded to produce more consistent curve comparisons. Additional chart added for countries currently with less than 100 deaths attributed to COVID-19.
14 April 2020: Peru joins countries with at least 200 deaths attributed to COVID-19
13 April 2020: No countries added to locations list. No countries join list of countries with at least 200 deaths attributed to COVID-19
12 April 2020: Mexico and Poland join list of countries with at least 200 deaths attributed to COVID-19
11 April 2020: Yemen added to locations list.
10 April 2020: India and Philippines join list of countries with at least 200 deaths attributed to COVID-19
09 April 2020: Ecuador, Romania, Algeria and South Korea join list of countries with at least 200 deaths attributed to COVID-19
08 April 2020: Ireland and Denmark join the list of countries with at least 200 deaths attributed to COVID-19
07 April 2020: 1 country added to locations list: Africa: Sao Tome and Principe. Indonesia joins the list of countries with at least 200 deaths attributed to COVID-19
06 April 2020: 3 countries added to locations list – N.America: Saint Pierre and Miquelon (listed under France in source countries list); Africa: South Sudan and Western Sahara. Austria joins list of countries with at least 200 deaths attributed to COVID-19
05 April 2020: 1 country added to locations list – S.America: Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas), under United Kingdom in source countries list. Canada joins list of countries with at least 200 deaths attributed to COVID-19
04 April 2020: No changes to locations list or worldwide countries with at least 200 deaths attributed to COVID-19
03 April 2020: 2 countries added to locations list – Africa: Malawi; S.America: Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba (attributed to the Netherlands in source data). Portugal joins the list of countries with at least 200 deaths reported.
02 April 2020: No countries added to locations list. Sweden joins list of countries with at least 200 deaths reported.
01 April 2020: 2 countries added to locations list – Africa; Burundi, Sierra Leone. 2 countries join list of countries with at least 200 deaths reported: Turkey and Brazil.
31 March 2020: 1 country added to locations list – Africa; Botswana
30 March 2020: No countries added to locations list. Worldwide visualisation updated to count from day when at least 100 deaths recorded.
29 March 2020: 3 countries added to locations (all listed as ‘United Kingdom’ for country in source data) and a cruise ship. N.America: Anguilla, British Virgin Islands, Turks and Caicos Islands; Cruise ships: MS Zaandam
28 March 2020: Asia: Burma (Myanmar) added. Switzerland added to list of countries with at least 200 reported deaths.
27 March 2020: N.America: Two states added to Canada: Northwest Territories and Yukon. Europe: Kosovo added. Belgium joins list of countries with at least 200 reported deaths.
26 March 2020: Four countries added to source data. Africa: Guinea-Bissau, Mali; N.America: St Kitts and Nevis; Asia: West Bank and Gaza. Germanyjoins list of countries with at least 200 reported deaths.
25 March 2020: First visualisation posted. US cities and states no longer listed separately in source data.
Data sources and preparation
Source data for number of deaths recorded per country provided by John Hopkins University, updated daily at https://github.com/CSSEGISandData/COVID-19/tree/master/csse_covid_19_data/csse_covid_19_time_series
The source data is organised as country/region and province/state. Some countries have internal states (Australia, Canada and China). For some countries, the regions are overseas territories. For example, the United Kingdom is listed as a country. It’s provinces include Bermuda, Cayman Islands, Channel Islands, Isle of Man and Monserrat. Denmark as a country has regions for Denmark, the Faroe Islands and Greenland. With the exception of the Isle of Man, overseas territories are treated as separate countries.
The two cruise ships – The Diamond Princess and the Grand Princess – are excluded from country counts.
‘US’ has been renamed to ‘USA’; Hong Kong is listed separately to China. All other countries are as listed in the source data.
Up until 22 March, the USA was detailed by city and state in Source data. From 23 March, only a single count for the country USA is provided.
As of 26 March, Canada has a region called ‘Recovered’. It is excluded from the count for Canada.
An additional field ‘Continent’ has been added to group countries by continent. Continent is based on the country listings provided by the World Atlas at https://www.worldatlas.com/cntycont.htm as of 22 March 2020.
Country population data has been retrieved from Worldometer at https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/population-by-country/ as of 27 March 2020. Holy See land area added (0.44km2) and population density calculated based on land area (km2) for all countries.
News about data being reported:
31 March 2020: UK only counting deaths recorded in hospital. China now counting cases with asymptomatic symptoms.
Related posts
Banner image at top of post by mattthewafflecat from Pixabay
Joining Dots 
[…] The primary data source is the time series of reported deaths attributed to COVID-19 being published openly on Github by the Centre for Systems and Science Engineering (CSSE) at John Hopkins University. Data is being captured per country and, for some countries, per region. Notes about how the data and how locations are organised are detailed in a separate post: COVID-19: Daily Updates. […]
[…] details about the data sources and preparation, view COVID-19: Daily Updates. The plots presented are based on data as of 29 March […]