Less than 1% of America’s population lives in long-term care facilities, but as of February 25, 2021, this tiny fraction of the country accounts for nearly two in five COVID-19 deaths. Over the past year, as COVID-19 outbreaks erupted at long-term-care facilities across the nation, state health departments reported the data in fragmented and unstandardized pieces—if they reported it at all. In May 2020, The COVID Tracking Project began gathering COVID-19 data from nursing homes, assisted-living facilities, and other long-term-care facilities from every state that provided it, to build our Long-Term-Care COVID Tracker into the most comprehensive collection of long-term-care-facility information available.
Our entire facility-level database of cases and deaths is available for download, and state specific facility-level data can be found on individual state page. Addresses and unique IDs for each facility shown on this map are downloadable in our reference database.
The data in our Long-Term-Care COVID Tracker comes directly from state websites or via email from state public health agencies and is collected by our volunteers. We have tried to make the data formatting as consistent as possible, to be able to compare numbers across states, and we’ve tried to match all nursing home facility names to their corresponding federal identification numbers. There are certainly limitations to this approach, and we expect there will be some discrepancies. Additionally, we expect that some assisted-living facilities and other long-term-care facility locations and names may not match up with physical facility locations and names.
This map is our best attempt to visualize every state-reported COVID-19 case or death tied to a long-term-care facility in the United States. If our data shows that a state reported data for current outbreak (yellow) rather than cumulative data (purple), we show the current outbreak data—though it’s worth remembering that every state defines a “current outbreak” differently. Bubble size corresponds to the total number of COVID-19 cases in a facility as reported by states.
Data definitions
The data presented for each facility on the map includes:
Long-term-care Facilities: Nursing homes, assisted-living facilities and other long-term-care facilities
Cases: Lab-confirmed COVID-19 cases
Deaths: Confirmed and suspected COVID-19 deaths. Total COVID-19 deaths in long-term care facilities as defined by the state. In some states, this may be deaths among confirmed or probable COVID-19 cases, and in other states it may be deaths with COVID-19 listed on the death certificate. Death data may combine staff and resident death totals.
Cumulative: COVID-19 total data within the time frame of the date of reporting and the reported collection starting date. States vary in their reported cumulative data start date.
Current Outbreak: When the first COVID-19 case (or cases) is identified in a facility. This outbreak is considered closed once a specified time period, defined by the state (28 days, 14 days, etc.), has passed without the discovery of a new case.