Data in this section are combined from the following sources: official reporting to WHO through regional offices via case report forms or weekly aggregate reporting, and taken from official public websites, not officially reported to WHO. WHO Member States select the reporting system they prefer to use, and data from different reporting systems are reconciled (referred to as "detailed surveillance data"). Individual countries, areas, and territories may decline to allow country-level disaggregation.

Counts primarily reflect laboratory-confirmed hospitalizations, based upon WHO definitions, although some departures may exist due to local adaptations. Counts include both domestic and repatriated cases. Case detection, definitions, testing strategies, reporting practices, and lag times (e.g., time to case notification and time to reporting of hospitalizations) differ between countries, territories, and areas. These factors, amongst others, influence the counts presented, with variable under- or overestimation of true counts, and variable delays in reflecting these data at a global level.

Caveats:

• Completeness for indicators varies between countries, regions, and over time.
• Detailed surveillance data may reflect different sub-national jurisdictions than those used for cases and deaths data, and thus may not follow a similar pattern.
• Reporting delays can be observed.
• Case identification in a country is subject to detection and testing strategies, which vary between countries and over time.
• Regardless of the definitions provided, these data might include incidental hospitalizations and ICU admissions.
• Due to varying degrees of information collection and submission, it is recommended to analyze each country/territory independently.
• Data sources might change over time from universal to sentinel reporting for some indicators in some countries (e.g., new hospitalizations from the United States of America are reported from a hospital network from 20 February 2024). Due to the scarcity of the reporting globally and the importance of sharing the available information publicly, we continue to reflect this data; please be cautious while interpreting sharp decreases in the volume of data compared to previous periods.

All data represent the date of admission as opposed to the date of reporting. Data are reported remotely and refreshed once a week in this report, while data quality control and data cleaning are continuous.

Thus, they may change based on retrospective updates to accurately reflect trends, changes in country case definitions, and/or reporting practices. Significant data errors detected or reported to WHO may be corrected at more frequent intervals.

From the 31 December 2019 to the 21 March 2020, WHO collected the numbers of confirmed COVID-19 cases and deaths through official communications under the International Health Regulations (IHR, 2005), complemented by monitoring the official ministries of health websites and social media accounts. Since 22 March 2020, global data is compiled through WHO region-specific dashboards, and/or aggregate count data reported to WHO headquarters.

Counts primarily reflect laboratory-confirmed cases and deaths, based upon WHO case definitions; although some departures may exist due to local adaptations. Counts include both domestic and repatriated cases. Case detection, definitions, testing strategies, reporting practice, and lag times (e.g. time to case notification, and time to reporting of deaths) differ between countries, territories and areas. These factors, amongst others, influence the counts presented with variable under or overestimation of true case and death counts, and variable delays to reflecting these data at a global level.

All data represent date of reporting as opposed to date of symptom onset. All data are subject to continuous verification and may change based on retrospective updates to accurately reflect trends, changes in country case definitions and/or reporting practices. Significant data errors detected or reported to WHO may be corrected at more frequent intervals.

New case and death counts from the Region of the Americas
Starting from the week commencing on 11 September 2023, the source of the data from the Region of the Americas was switched to the aggregated national surveillances, received through the COVID-19, Influenza, RSV and Other Respiratory Viruses program in the Americas. Data have been included retrospectively since 31 July 2023.

Rates
<0.001 per 100,000 population may be rounded to 0.

COVID-19 vaccination data are collected via WHO regional office-specific systems for monitoring COVID-19 vaccination uptake.  These data are pooled from numerous sources, including direct reports from Member States, WHO review of publicly available official data, or data collated and published by third-party sites. Data published by third-party sites have not been validated by WHO, and WHO cannot comment on accuracy or completeness. Differences in counts may occur compared to other sources, due to different inclusion criteria and data cut-off times. 

Estimated populations and projections are drawn from:

• United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division. World Population Prospects 2019, Online Edition. Rev. 1 (2020 projections).
• Eurostat. “Demo_pjan” (population as of 1 January by country, year, age and gender; last updated by Eurostat on 2021-02-12; last year of data: 2020).
• National Statistics Office Malta.
• The Government of the Pitcairn Islands.
• Statistics Netherlands (CBS). Estimates of population for Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba.

*Total population for France has been adjusted to account for the following overseas territories (French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Mayotte, Réunion, Saint Martin).