Weekly COVID-19 County Community Transmission Levels Archive

This archived dataset contains weekly county-level COVID-19 community transmission levels as originally posted, with data appended weekly since October 20, 2022. It includes metrics such as total new cases per 100,000 persons and the percentage of positive diagnostic tests over 7-day periods. The data is no longer updated following the expiration of the public health emergency declaration in May 2023.

Use Cases

• Analyze trends in the 'total new COVID-19 cases per 100,000 persons' metric to model county-level outbreak patterns.
• Compare the 'percentage of positive SARS-CoV-2 diagnostic NAATs' across different counties to assess regional testing and transmission dynamics.
• Study the classification of transmission levels (low, moderate, substantial, high) derived from the two core metrics for public health policy analysis.
• Use the weekly appended data since October 20, 2022, to track the evolution of community transmission levels over time.

Strengths

• Data provides a consistent weekly time series for community transmission levels since October 20, 2022.
• Includes two specific, defined metrics for calculating transmission levels: case rate and test positivity percentage.
• Covers all available counties and jurisdictions in the United States.

Limitations

• The dataset is archived and no longer updated, making it unsuitable for current situation analysis.
• Percent positivity data may be incomplete for the most recent time periods in the archive.
• Historical corrections are not applied; data reflects values as originally posted, which may contain uncorrected errors.

Provenance

Source

United States Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Collection Method

Data was originally posted on the CDC COVID Data Tracker, with weekly appends of the most recent week's data. Transmission levels are calculated from reported aggregate case and laboratory test data.

Time Range

Weekly data from at least October 20, 2022, until archiving in May 2023.

Freshness

Archived; last appended data is from the week ending with the dataset's final update prior to May 11, 2023.

Geography

County-level data for all available counties and jurisdictions in the United States.