Respiratory Virus Concentrations in Chicago Wastewater from Seven Sites Since 2022

Seven sewershed sites in Chicago have been sampled twice weekly since February 2022 to measure concentrations of SARS-CoV-2, RSV, and influenza A and B viruses. The data, managed by the City of Chicago, provides weekly within-site and overall average concentrations to track disease trends. This dataset replaces a previous COVID-19-specific wastewater dataset and is updated weekly.

Use Cases

• Forecasting respiratory disease outbreaks based on weekly virus concentration trends.
• Comparing the prevalence of SARS-CoV-2, RSV, and influenza across different Chicago neighborhoods based on sewershed sites.
• Analyzing seasonal patterns of multiple respiratory viruses from longitudinal wastewater data.
• Validating clinical case reports with community-level wastewater surveillance data.

Strengths

• Data collection began in February 2022, providing a multi-year time series.
• Covers four distinct respiratory viruses (SARS-CoV-2, RSV, Influenza A, B) from seven specific sites.
• Updated weekly with a recent last update timestamp of 2026-03-22.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• The description warns of potential double-counting if aggregating rows that include the 'All sites' summary.

Provenance

Source

City of Chicago

Collection Method

Samples collected from the Chicago sewer system, with concentrations measured at seven sewershed sites.

Time Range

Since February 2022

Freshness

Updated weekly; last updated 2026-03-22 04:04:05.840335.

Geography

Chicago, Illinois, USA