Why Do COVID-19 Deaths in Sweden Always Appear to Decrease in the Last 10 Days?

There are two ways that COVID-19 deaths can be presented over time: by the date of death, or the date on which the death is reported. Neither of these methods is necessarily better than the other—but it can affect comparisons across countries and over time if these methods are not consistent.

In the data that we present on Our World in Data, which comes directly from the European CDC, deaths in Sweden are shown by date of death, while deaths in other countries are shown by date of report.

This matters because it takes a number of days until all deaths for a particular day are reported. In practice this means that Sweden might today only report 10 deaths for yesterday, but once reporting is complete the death count for that day might increase to 40. Read more…..