COVID-19 Cases information is reported through the Pennsylvania State Department’s National Electronic Disease Surveillance System (PA-NEDSS). As new cases are passed to the Allegheny County Health Department they are investigated by case investigators. During investigation some cases which are initially determined by the State to be in the Allegheny County jurisdiction may change, which can account for differences between publication of the files on the number of cases, deaths and tests. Additionally, information is not always reported to the State in a timely manner, delays can range from days to weeks, which can also account for discrepancies between previous and current files. Test and Case information will be updated daily. This resource contains individuals who received a COVID-19 test and individuals whom are probable cases. Every day, these records are overwritten with updates. Each row in the data reflects a person that is tested, not tests that are conducted. People that are tested more than once will have their testing and case data updated using the following rules:

1. Positive tests overwrite negative tests.
2. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests overwrite antibody or antigen (AG) tests.
3. The first positive PCR test is never overwritten. Data collected from additional tests do not replace the first positive PCR test.

Note: On April 4th 2022 the Pennsylvania Department of Health no longer required labs to report negative AG tests. Therefore aggregated counts that included AG tests have been removed from the Municipality/Neighborhood files going forward. Versions of this data up to this cut-off have been retained as archived files.

Individual Test information is also updated daily. This resource contains the details and results of individual tests along with demographic information of the individual tested. Only PCR and AG tests are included. Every day, these records are overwritten with updates. This resource should be used to determine positivity rates.

The remaining datasets provide statistics on death demographics. Demographic, municipality and neighborhood information for deaths are reported on a weekly schedule and are not included with individual cases or tests. This has been done to protect the privacy and security of individuals and their families in accordance with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). Municipality or City of Pittsburgh Neighborhood is based off the geocoded home address of the individual tested.

Individuals whose home address is incomplete may not be in Allegheny County but whose temporary residency, work or other mitigating circumstance are determined to be in Allegheny County by the Pennsylvania Department of Health are counted as "Undefined".

Since the start of the pandemic, the ACHD has mapped every day’s COVID tests, cases, and deaths to their Allegheny County municipality and neighborhood. Tests were mapped to patient address, and if this was not available, to the provider location. This has recently resulted in apparent testing rates that exceeded the populations of various municipalities -- mostly those with healthcare providers. As this was brought to our attention, the health department and our data partners began researching and comparing methods to most accurately display the data. This has led us to leave those with missing home addresses off the map. Although these data will still appear in test, case and death counts, there will be over 20,000 fewer tests and almost 1000 fewer cases on the map. In addition to these map changes, we have identified specific health systems and laboratories that had data uploading errors that resulted in missing locations, and are working with them to correct these errors.

Due to minor discrepancies in the Municipal boundary and the City of Pittsburgh Neighborhood files individuals whose City Neighborhood cannot be identified are be counted as “Undefined (Pittsburgh)”.

On May 19, 2023, with the rescinding of the COVID-19 public health emergency, changes in data and reporting mechanisms prompted a change to an annual data sharing schedule for tests, cases, hospitalizations, and deaths. Dates for annual release are TBD. The weekly municipal counts and individual data produced before this changed are maintained as archive files.

Support for Health Equity datasets and tools provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS) through their Health Equity Initiative.