National updates are published at different times and in different time zones.
This, and the time ECDC needs to process these data, may lead to discrepancies between the national numbers and the numbers published by ECDC.
Users are advised to use all data with caution and awareness of their limitations.
Data are subject to retrospective corrections; corrected datasets are released as soon as processing of updated national data has been completed.
Belgium:
• [Daily cases and deaths] 27 August – 02 September 2020 data should be read as 26 August – 01 September 2020 due to a one-day reporting delay
• [Daily cases and deaths] 21 June – 27 June 2020 (week 25),
Belgium authorities
slightly modified the reporting in order to report the COVID-19 cases by date of sampling or diagnosis. COVID-19 deaths are reported by date of death. The earliest available date is used and might be changed as new information becomes available.
• [Long-term care facility data] Data only refers to nursing homes, and not to other types of long-term care facilities.
Denmark:
• [Long-term care facility data] The sources for LTCF data are the ”Plejehjemsoversigten” (a database of care homes), the Danish Microbiology Database (MiBa) and the Danish Civil Registration system.
France:
• [Testing, national and subnational cases] Starting in week 49 of 2020, the following changes have occurred in COVID-19 surveillance in France: a) the case definition has been updated to include antigen tests as a laboratory method to confirm a case; b) test positivity is calculated as the number of patients testing positive for SARS-CoV-2 (by RT-PCR or AT) divided by the number of patients testing positive for SARS-CoV-2 and the number of individuals testing negative; c) the number of individuals tested during a certain period corresponds to the number of people who had at least one test during this period and who have never tested positive in the previous 60 days; d) the number of individuals tested positive corresponds to a person who tested positive either for the first time or after more than 60 days after a previous positive test (in this event the person will be counted as a new case). As a result of these changes, surveillance artefacts are present in the values for week 49 compared to week 48 for test positivity (decrease, due to an increase in the denominator of number of people tested) and the testing rate (increase, approximately doubled). An increase in the case notification rate is also expected to occur due to an increased number of detections by antigen tests.
• [Testing, subnational cases] Starting in week 44 of 2020, data for some indicators displayed in ECDC’s surveillance outputs (testing rate, test positivity and subnational case notification rates) are provided for a week that runs from Saturday to Friday (i.e. two days earlier than calendar week). Data for all other indicators are for the calendar week.
• [Daily cases and deaths] 29 May 2020, the increase in cases in the dashboard does not reflect increased incidence of COVID-19 cases, but an improved comprehensiveness of the surveillance system.
• [Daily cases and deaths] 13 May 2020 there was a significant change in the French surveillance of lab confirmed COVID-19 cases and virtually all laboratories in France are now included in the system. Cases from this new system were reported on 29 May.
• [Daily cases and deaths] 7 May 2020, France reported an increase over 3 200 cases. This increase is due to the addition of new laboratories who transmitted retrospective positive tests (since 16 March 2020).
Germany:
• [Long-term care facility data] The reporting week starts on Tuesdays and ends on Mondays. The number of cases and deaths (the numerators) and the number of LTCF residents (the denominator) only includes residents older than 65 years.
Italy:
• [Long-term care facility data] The data reported represent 7 participating regions of 19 regions and 2 autonomous provinces of Italy until Week 2 2021. Thereafter, the data represented 8 of 19 regions and 2 autonomous provinces (1590/4629 LTFs).
Ireland:
• [Daily cases and deaths] 2 October 2020 authorities in Ireland retrospectively corrected the total number of COVID-19 deaths leading to a negative value for the deaths reported on 3 October 2020.
• [Daily cases and deaths] 5 April – 19 April 2020 the daily number of confirmed COVID-19 cases reported in Ireland is inflated due to batch reporting of cases with specimen dates between from 19 March – 01 April 2020 in addition to real-time reporting of cases with contemporaneous specimen dates.
• [Daily cases and deaths] On 15 February 2022 authorities in Ireland retrospectively corrected the total number of COVID-19 cases reported between 22 December 2021 and 14 February 2022 leading to a negative value for the cases reported on 15 February 2022.
• [Long-term care facility data] The rates that use ‘number of beds’ as a denominator are an overestimate, because currently the denominator does not include all facility types.
Luxembourg:
• [Daily cases and deaths] 24 August 2020, authorities in Luxembourg report COVID-19 cases and deaths from their resident population only. Therefore, the difference with the figure from 27 August translates into a negative value for the cases and deaths reported on 28 August 2020.
Netherlands:
• [Testing] Since week 38 of 2020, the number of tests reported are corrected for underreporting from virological laboratories. The estimated number of tests is obtained by multiplying the weekly total number of tests reported from virological laboratories by the weekly ratio of COVID-19 notifications by municipal health services to positive tests reported from virological laboratories. From week 12 of 2021 up until week 12 of 2022, the number of entry tests for events and activities, as reported by ‘Stichting Open Nederland’, were being collected and were added to this data. From week 29 up to and including week 39 of 2021, the number of tests for commercial testing of outbound travellers, sourced from the various commercial testing organizations as reported by ‘the Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management’, were added to these data. From March 31st 2021 until April 11th 2022, a positive self-test result needed to be confirmed at the Public Health Services’ system (PHS, in Dutch: GGD). From April 11th 2022 this is no longer required.
• [Daily cases and deaths] From January 18th, the national public health institute (RIVM), was experiencing delays due to the high number of incoming reports. To solve this problem, the data feed had been changed on February 8th to a new data feed. All new and previous SARS-CoV-2 positive tests, which were not yet reported to the COVID Surveillance of the national public health institute (RIVM), now flow directly from the test venues to the RIVM. As a result of this catching up, a very high number of positive cases was reported in week 6.
• [Daily cases and deaths] There is an underreporting of the variables in the NCOV case-based data. From the 1st of September 2022, the Public Health Services’ system (PHS, in Dutch: GGD) is instructed to only collect all variables for persons with a high risk of severe COVID-19. These groups include (1) persons admitted to a hospital, (2) persons living in institutions or forms of housing where persons with an increased risk of severe COVID-19 are staying and (3) persons who have died from COVID-19. However, in the Netherlands it is not obligatory to report deaths due to COVID-19. Because of this, PHS and RIVM do not have a complete overview of all deaths related to COVID-19. This underreporting will not affect the total number of cases reported in the NCOV case-based file, but will put more variable outcomes on UNK.
• [Hospitalisations] Since January 25th 2022, hospitals report the reason for hospital/ICU admission of patients who tested positive for SARS-CoV-2. Therefore, from March 22th 2022 we will exclude patients from the NCOVAGGR data file that were admitted due to other reasons than their SARS-CoV-2 infection. This will be updated retrospectively for all patients admitted since January 25th 2022. It should be noted that for a relatively large amount of patients (approximately one third), it is unknown or not reported whether SARS-CoV-2 was the reason for admission. These admissions are not excluded and remain in the reported dataset.
• [Vaccination status in case-based file] In the Netherlands a person is also registered as having completed the primary vaccination course when this person had one dose of vaccine (with exclusion of Janssen) within six months after a COVID-19 infection. Excluded from this are persons aged 80 years and older. This group always needs two doses of vaccine to be registered as having completed the primary vaccination course.
• [Vaccination status in case-based file] In the Netherlands, an immune compromised person is registered as having completed the primary vaccination course when this person had three doses of mRNA vaccine. This group of persons is already invited to get their fifth dose of vaccine. Because of this, these persons could already have 5 doses of vaccine of which only the first four are passed on to ECDC when these persons are tested positive for SARS-CoV-2.
Norway:
• [Long-term care facility data] The data presented is from the national Emergency preparedness register for COVID-19 (Beredt C19) established at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health. The results are from merged registers and not collected from local level LTCFs.
Slovakia:
• [Note] As of 18 May 2021, the COVID-19 data reported for Slovakia includes both positive PCR and antigen tests resulting in an increase in cases.
Spain:
• [Daily cases and deaths] 27 August – 02 September 2020 data should be read as 26 August – 01 September 2020 due to a one-day reporting delay.
• [Long-term care facility data] National reports present data on confirmed cases only. According to the national definition, a facility with a single case is considered to have an outbreak.
• [Daily cases and deaths] On 30 March 2022, Spanish authorities reported a decrease in cumulative deaths due to retrospective corrections in several regions.
Sweden:
• [Testing] Since week 40 of 2020, the number of tests reported has been the number of tested individuals per week. From weeks 27–39 this related to the number of analysed tests per week. Where testing data are not available in advance of the reporting deadline the number of tests for the most recent week are estimated using the previous week’s data.
• [Daily cases and deaths] 31 August 2020 Swedish authorities are now performing daily data consolidation leading to data retro-corrections. From week 38, the Swedish Public Health Agency will update COVID-19 daily data four times per week on Tuesday–Friday. This can result in a decrease of cumulative figures (cases or deaths) and related outputs.
• [Daily cases and deaths] 27 August – 02 September 2020 data should be read as 26 August – 01 September 2020 due to a one-day reporting delay.
• [Cases] From January 2022, one laboratory in Sweden has experienced problems in reporting to the national notification system for notifiable communicable diseases. As of week 23, cases from January and onwards are being reported, which will lead to an increased number of cases in the next weeks.
• [Cases] From January 2022, one laboratory in Sweden has experienced problems in reporting to the national notification system for notifiable communicable diseases. From week 23 up to week 39, cases from January and onwards were reported retrospectively. In week 39, the remaining 9,496 cases tested in January and early February was reported. The post-registration is thus completed.
United Kingdom:
• [Daily cases and deaths] 3 October 2020, due to a technical issue, COVID-19 cases from 24 September to 1 October will be reported by British authorities in the coming days.
• [Daily cases and deaths] 13 August 2020, the United Kingdom did not report cumulative cases and deaths due to technical difficulties. Data are updated as soon as available.
• [Daily cases and deaths] 10 August 2020 the United Kingdom reported less cumulative deaths in the United Kingdom. This is due to revisions in historical data.
Due to the reporting delay in Belgium, Spain and Sweden the 14-day period for these countries is provided with one day delay e.g.
the period 27/08/2020-02/09/2020 should be read 26/08/2020-01/09/2020.