Percent of Tests Positive for Viral Respiratory Pathogens

Weekly percent positivity data tracks SARS-CoV-2, RSV, and influenza across a sentinel network of U.S. clinical, public health, and commercial laboratories. The National Respiratory and Enteric Virus Surveillance System (NREVSS) aggregates these results, which are based on laboratory tests performed, not individual people. All data are provisional and subject to change.

Use Cases

• Tracking weekly national trends in respiratory virus activity using `week_end` and `percent_test_positivity`.
• Comparing the relative prevalence of different pathogens over time using `pathogen` and `week_end`.
• Assessing the impact of public health interventions by analyzing changes in `percent_test_positivity` across weeks.

Strengths

• Data is sourced from the CDC's National Respiratory and Enteric Virus Surveillance System (NREVSS), a sentinel network of laboratories across the United States.
• The dataset provides a consistent, weekly time-series metric (`percent_test_positivity`) for three major respiratory pathogens.
• Cross-platform presence on Socrata and Data.gov indicates established use and importance for public health surveillance.

Limitations

• Key metadata such as row count, file size, and precise temporal coverage are missing or conflicting across sources.
• The description notes that RSV and COVID-19 data are limited to nucleic acid amplification tests (NAATs/PCR), which may not represent all testing methodologies.
• All data are provisional and subject to change, which may affect the stability of analyses over time.

Provenance

Source

U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), National Respiratory and Enteric Virus Surveillance System (NREVSS).

Collection Method

Participating clinical, public health, and commercial laboratories report weekly total and positive test counts to the CDC.

Freshness

Last updated on 2026-04-11 according to two sources, though one source shows 2026-04-03.

Geography

United States (national level).