DOI: 10.3886/e243467v1
title: United States COVID-19 County Level of Community Transmission Historical Changes - ARCHIVED

description: On October 20, 2022, CDC began retrieving aggregate case and death data from jurisdictional and state partners weekly instead of daily. This dataset contains archived historical community transmission and related data elements by county. Although these data will continue to be publicly available, this dataset has not been updated since October 20, 2022. An archived dataset containing weekly historical community transmission data by county can also be found here: Weekly COVID-19 County Level of Community Transmission Historical Changes | Data | Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (cdc.gov).

Related data
CDC has been providing the public with two versions of COVID-19 county-level community transmission level data: this historical dataset with the daily county-level transmission data from January 22, 2020, and a dataset with the daily values as originally posted on the COVID Data Tracker. Similar to this dataset, the original dataset with daily data as posted is archived on 10/20/2022. It will continue to be publicly available but will no longer be updated. A new dataset containing community transmission data by county as originally posted is now published weekly and can be found at: Weekly COVID-19 County Level of Community Transmission as Originally Posted | Data | Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (cdc.gov).

This public use dataset has 7 data elements reflecting historical data for community transmission levels for all available counties and jurisdictions. It contains historical data for the county level of community transmission and includes updated data submitted by states and jurisdictions. Each day, the dataset was updated to include the most recent days’ data and incorporate any historical changes made by jurisdictions. This dataset includes data since January 22, 2020. Transmission level is set to low, moderate, substantial, or high using the calculation rules below.

Methods for calculating county level of community transmission indicator
The County Level of Community Transmission indicator uses two metrics: (1) total new COVID-19 cases per 100,000 persons in the last 7 days and (2) percentage of positive SARS-CoV-2 diagnostic nucleic acid amplification tests (NAAT) in the last 7 days. For each of these metrics, CDC classifies transmission values as low, moderate, substantial, or high (below and here). If the values for each of these two metrics differ (e.g., one indicates moderate and the other low), then the higher of the two should be used for decision-making.

CDC core metrics of and thresholds for community transmission levels of SARS-CoV-2

Total New Case Rate Metric: "New cases per 100,000 persons in the past 7 days" is calculated by adding the number of new cases in the county (or other administrative level) in the last 7 days divided by the population in the county (or other administrative level) and multiplying by 100,000. "New cases per 100,000 persons in the past 7 days" is considered to have transmission level of Low (0-9.99); Moderate (10.00-49.99); Substantial (50.00-99.99); and High (greater than or equal to 100.00).

Test Percent Positivity Metric: "Percentage of positive NAAT in the past 7 days" is calculated by dividing the number of positive tests in the county (or other administrative level) during the last 7 days by the total number of tests resulted over the last 7 days. "Percentage of positive NAAT in the past 7 days" is considered to have transmission level of Low (less than 5.00); Moderate (5.00-7.99); Substantial (8.00-9.99); and High (greater than or equal to 10.00).

If the two metrics suggest different transmission levels, the higher level is selected. If one metric is missing, the other metric is used for the indicator.

The reported transmission categories include:

Low Transmission Threshold: Counties with fewer than 10 total cases per 100,000 population in the past 7 days, and a NAAT percent test positivity in the past 7 days below 5%;

Moderate Transmission Threshold: Counties with 10-49 total cases per 100,000 population in the past 7 days or a NAAT test percent positivity in the past 7 days of 5.0-7.99%;

Substantial Transmission Threshold: Counties with 50-99 total cases per 100,000 population in the past 7 days or a NAAT test percent positivity in the past 7 days of 8.0-9.99%;

High Transmission Threshold: Counties with 100 or more total cases per 100,000 population in the past 7 days or a NAAT test percent positivity in the past 7 days of 10.0% or greater.

Blank: total new cases in the past 7 days are not reported (county data known to be unavailable) and the percentage of positive NAATs tests during the past 7 days (blank) are not reported.

Data Suppression
To prevent the release of data that could be used to identify people, data cells are suppressed for low frequency. When the case counts used to calculate the total new case rate metric ("cases_per_100K_7_day_count_change") is greater than zero and less than 10, this metric is set to "suppressed" to protect individual privacy. If the case count is 0, the total new case rate metric is still displayed.

The data in this dataset are considered provisional by CDC and are subject to change until the data are reconciled and verified with the state and territorial data providers. This datasets are created using CDC’s Policy on Public Health Research and Nonresearch Data Management and Access.

Duplicate Records Issue
A bug was found on 12/28/2021 that caused many records in the dataset to be duplicated. This issue was resolved on 01/06/2022.
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