DOI: 10.3886/e243536
title: Outpatient Respiratory Illness Activity Map

description: This dataset has been archived and will no longer be updated as of 10/16/2024. For updated data, please refer to the ILINet State Activity Indicator Map.

Information on outpatient visits to health care providers for respiratory illness referred to as influenza-like illness (ILI) is collected through the U.S. Outpatient Influenza-like Illness Surveillance Network (ILINet). ILINet consists of outpatient healthcare providers in all 50 states, Puerto Rico, the District of Columbia, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. More than 100 million patient visits were reported during the 2022-23 season. Each week, more than 3,000 outpatient health care providers around the country report to CDC the number of patient visits for ILI by age group (0-4 years, 5-24 years, 25-49 years, 50-64 years, and ≥65 years) and the total number of visits for any reason. A subset of providers also reports total visits by age group. For this system, ILI is defined as fever (temperature of 100°F [37.8°C] or greater) and a cough and/or a sore throat. Activity levels are based on the percent of outpatient visits due to ILI in a jurisdiction compared to the average percent of ILI visits that occur during weeks with little or no influenza virus circulation (non-influenza weeks) in that jurisdiction. The number of sites reporting each week is variable; therefore, baselines are adjusted each week based on which sites within each jurisdiction provide data. To perform this adjustment, provider level baseline ILI ratios are calculated for those that have a sufficient reporting history. Providers that do not have the required reporting history to calculate a provider-specific baseline are assigned the baseline ratio for their practice type. The jurisdiction level baseline is then calculated using a weighted sum of the baseline ratios for each contributing provider.

The activity levels compare the mean reported percent of visits due to ILI during the current week to the mean reported percent of visits due to ILI during non-influenza weeks. The 13 activity levels correspond to the number of standard deviations below, at, or above the mean for the current week compared with the mean during non-influenza weeks. Activity levels are classified as minimal (levels 1-3), low (levels 4-5), moderate (levels 6-7), high (levels 8-10), and very high (levels 11-13). An activity level of 1 corresponds to an ILI percentage below the mean, level 2 corresponds to an ILI percentage less than 1 standard deviation above the mean, level 3 corresponds to an ILI percentage more than 1 but less than 2 standard deviations above the mean, and so on, with an activity level of 10 corresponding to an ILI percentage 8 to 11 standard deviations above the mean. The very high levels correspond to an ILI percentage 12 to 15 standard deviations above the mean for level 11, 16 to 19 standard deviations above the mean for level 12, and 20 or more standard deviations above the mean for level 13.

Disclaimers:

The ILI Activity Indicator map reflects the intensity of ILI activity, not the extent of geographic spread of ILI, within a jurisdiction. Therefore, outbreaks occurring in a single area could cause the entire jurisdiction to display high or very high activity levels. In addition, data collected in ILINet may disproportionally represent certain populations within a jurisdiction, and therefore, may not accurately depict the full picture of respiratory illness activity for the entire jurisdiction. Differences in the data presented here by CDC and independently by some health departments likely represent differing levels of data completeness with data presented by the health department likely being more complete.

More information is available on FluView Interactive.
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