Weekly COVID-19 Cases: an Interactive Data Story from Our World in Data
This dataset gives the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in the previous seven days, reported daily, from the World Health Organization. It covers the whole pandemic, from the first reported cases in January 2020.
On this page the dataset is downloaded live from Our World in Data, straight into your browser, and turned into an interactive dashboard and a data story told as a timeline. Nothing is uploaded to a server and nothing needs installing.
Interactive dashboard and data story
At a glance
| Indicator | Weekly COVID-19 Cases |
| Unit | cases |
| Coverage | daily values from 2020 to the latest release |
| Highlighted entities | World, United States, India, Brazil, Germany |
| OWID chart id | weekly-covid-cases |
| Column | weekly_cases |
| Story format | Timeline |
| Source | Our World in Data, CC BY 4.0 |
Why this dataset is told as a timeline
The waves are events in time: peaks, markers and a comparison between countries, placed along a timeline.
Numbered stops along a central line that fills as you scroll, each one drawing its chart as it arrives. Datastripes can tell any dataset in eight formats: scrolling article, slide deck, conversation, newspaper front page, timeline, tap-through stories, quiz and bento grid. In automatic mode it picks one from the shape of the data. Here the format is fixed to the one that fits this indicator best. You can see every format side by side in the data story gallery.
Background
The first wave hit Europe and the US in spring 2020. Later waves were driven by new variants: Alpha in early 2021, Delta, which caused a devastating wave in India in April and May 2021, and Omicron, which produced by far the largest number of confirmed cases worldwide at the turn of 2022.
After 2022 most countries scaled back testing and reporting, so confirmed cases became a much weaker signal of how many people were actually infected.
How the indicator is measured
Countries report confirmed cases to the WHO, which publishes them as daily values of the rolling seven-day sum. Confirmed cases depend on how much a country tests: true infections were much higher, especially early on and after testing was reduced.
What to look for in the data
- The Omicron wave at the turn of 2022 is by far the largest peak in confirmed cases.
- India’s Delta wave in spring 2021 rose and fell within a couple of months.
- Germany’s largest wave came in 2022, later than in most other countries in this selection.
- Reported cases fall to near zero after 2023 in many countries, reflecting less testing rather than no infections.
Limits and caveats
- Testing levels varied hugely across countries and over time, so case counts are not comparable between countries.
- Reporting changes, such as weekly instead of daily reports, create artificial spikes and drops.
- Deaths and excess mortality are more reliable measures of the pandemic’s toll.
Who uses weekly covid-19 cases data
- Epidemiologists and public health teams
- Health data journalists
- Teachers and students
- Researchers studying pandemic response
How to analyze this dataset yourself
- Open the data. Download the CSV from the Our World in Data chart and drop it into Datastripes. It loads in your browser, with no upload.
- Filter the entities. The file has one row per country and day. Filter the
entitycolumn to the countries or regions you care about, or usecode(for examplewho) to pick out aggregates. - Pick a time window. Sort or filter on the time column to isolate a period, such as the years before and after a policy change.
- Join other indicators. Add a second OWID file, for example GDP or population, and join it on entity and year to look for relations.
- Forecast and simulate. Run a no-code forecast on any series, or build what-if scenarios on top of it.
- Publish a story. Turn your filtered table into a data story in any of the eight formats and embed it on your site with the Datastripes dashboard widget.
Related data stories
- Life Expectancy: timeline
- Child Mortality Rates: newspaper front page
- CO2 Emissions: timeline
- GDP Per Capita (Maddison): newspaper front page
- All data stories in the gallery
Frequently asked questions
Why weekly and not daily cases?
Daily counts swing with weekends and reporting delays. A rolling seven-day sum smooths that noise.
Why are cases near zero now?
Most countries stopped mass testing and reporting, not because the virus disappeared.
Where can I compare deaths?
OWID publishes confirmed deaths and excess mortality series that can be loaded into Datastripes the same way.
Data: Our World in Data, published under CC BY 4.0, downloaded in your browser when you open this page. Datastripes is not affiliated with Our World in Data. Visualisations are generated automatically and may lag behind the latest OWID release by a few days.