Just a quick update:

JHU acknowledge the issue issue [1], they also fixed it during a few hours on 14 April but they introduced it again,  and they received countless detailed explanations of the errors [2]. It does not look like there is any intent to fix the issue. What's worse, reliable sources like Reuters are citing JHU and being dragged into this non-sense. Not only they double-count dozens of thousands of cases in France, but they also apply different criteria for each country. In some cases they add suspected cases on top of the official confirmed cases, in some other cases they don't.

[1] https://github.com/CSSEGISandData/COVID-19/issues/2094
[2] https://github.com/CSSEGISandData/COVID-19/issues

Best,

Mario Gómez

On Fri, Apr 10, 2020 at 11:29 AM Mario Gómez <mariogomwiki@gmail.com> wrote:
Hello,

Both Worldometer and the Johns Hopkins University have persistently maintained incorrect counts for some countries. This leads a lot of users to either update our tables to the wrong counts (ignoring our cited sources) or repeatedly ask for updates in our talk pages.

I created a summary of common errors here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_COVID-19/Case_Count_Task_Force#Common_errors

France, New Zealand and Canada are countries were these errors are persistent and never corrected. I would like to expand on the case for France, which presents the worst error (quantitatively):

* Some overseas territories are double-counted in France total. Overseas departments, as well as the collectivities of Saint Barthélemy and Saint Martin are included in France official totals. Only the collectivities of French Polynesia, New Caledonia, Saint Pierre and Miquelon and Wallis and Futuna are not included. JHU double counts the former.

* Official France already counts include cases at nursing homes (EHPAD), but Worldometer and JHU adds them to the total, effectively double-counting them. The World Health Organization Situation Reports match this official count, not JHU's or Worldometer's.

I have contacted JHU with no response so far. Do you think it would be possible to approach them and ask about this? Unless me and other editors got something completely wrong, JHU and Worldometer figures for France are incorrectly inflated by ~30k cases.

Best,

Mario Gómez