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Pennsylvania Overview

Data Reporting Assessment (Learn more about data quality assessments)

Last updated

When Pennsylvania reports no data, several days of data, or unusual data (such as decreases in values that should increase), our volunteers note it here on the date the anomaly occurred. We also note here changes in our own methodology that affect the data.

Pennsylvania’s Recovered is calculated as total cases multiplied by the percentage of recovered cases from their data page. As a result of this calculation, this figure may fluctuate from day to day. We urge caution when interpreting this data.

On February 9, 2021, Pennsylvania announced via a press release that case data for February 8, 2021 would be low as a result of “technical maintenance to the data server on Sunday”. Data for February 9, 2021, will include cases from “catch-up reporting because of lengthy server downtime”. Additionally, they noted that death data is sourced from a different server and was not affected.

As of February 2, 2021, Pennsylvania's totalTestResults field is drawn from the 'totalTestEncountersViral' field instead of being calculated from positive+negative.

On February 1, 2021, we backfilled the full time series of Total Test Encounters (PCR), from data now available on Open Data Pennsylvania, and cleared our Total Tests (PCR) column. Going forward, we will enter PA's "Total PCR Tests" into Our Total Test Encounters (PCR) column rather than Total Tests (PCR), as the state's site describes the data as encounters.

On January 28, 2021, Pennsylvania noted that their case counts included backlogged antigen testing data from urgent care centers collected over a week ago. Pennsylvania will continue to report this data over the next few days, which will in turn affect our reported case counts.

On January 4, 2021, Pennsylvania announced "3,226 additional positive cases of COVID-19, in addition to 4,579 new cases reported Sunday, January 3 for a two-day total of 8,992 additional positive cases of COVID-19." In addition, case counts for January 4, 2021 are "atypically low" due to technical maintenance.

On December 28, 2020, Pennsylvania's Total PCR tests (specimens) value increased by ~690,000 from 7,202,533 tests to 7,892,184 tests. On December 29, 2020, this Total PCR tests value decreased by ~580,000 to 7,312,858 tests. We were unable to find an explanation for this fluctuation.

On December 14, 2020, Pennsylvania’s Total PCR tests (specimens) decreased by roughly 297k without explanation.

On September 3, 2020, Pennsylvania clarified that the test numbers they have been reporting previously are in units of unique people and began publishing new test data in units of specimens. On September 4, 2020, we therefore moved the appropriate historical data to the Total tests (people) field and began capturing Total PCR tests (specimens).

On April 23, 2020, Pennsylvania revised down its total Deaths (confirmed and probable) from 1,622 to 1,421 to exclude some probable deaths that needed further confirmation to be linked to COVID-19