U.S. State-Level Acute Respiratory Illness Activity from Emergency Department Visits

Data from data.cdc.gov tracks the weekly level of acute respiratory illness (ARI) activity by U.S. state. The ARI metric captures a broad range of diagnoses from emergency department visits, from the common cold to influenza, RSV, and COVID-19. The dataset was last updated on 2026-04-03 and is refreshed weekly on Fridays.

Use Cases

• Track weekly changes in respiratory illness activity by state using the week_end and label columns.
• Analyze geographic patterns of ARI by mapping the geography column against activity labels.
• Model temporal trends in respiratory disease burden by analyzing the week_end and label columns over time.
• Compare ARI activity levels across different states using the geography and label columns.

Strengths

• Captures a broad range of respiratory illnesses, including those without fever, offering a more complete picture than previous metrics.
• Updated weekly on a consistent schedule (Fridays), providing timely surveillance data.
• Data is sourced from the authoritative public health platform data.cdc.gov.

Limitations

• Row count and total dataset size are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for large-scale modeling.
• Description metadata is limited; actual data quality and completeness require manual inspection after download.

Provenance

Source

data.cdc.gov

Collection Method

Monitored using the acute respiratory illness (ARI) metric from emergency department visit data.

Freshness

Updated weekly on Fridays. Last updated 2026-04-03 16:01:23.

Geography

U.S. state-level, as indicated by the geography column.