CDC NHSN Hospital Respiratory Data
- Source
- CDC National Healthcare Safety Network
- Update Cadence
- Weekly
- Coverage
- National and state-level hospital reporting
- Official URL
- View source
What It Measures
This dataset tracks hospital-reported respiratory activity, including new COVID-19 and RSV admissions, current hospitalizations, ICU patients, and related capacity measures.
How Local Health Signal Uses It
Local Health Signal uses the weekly new admissions per 100,000 population measures from this feed to summarize:
- COVID-19 activity by state
- RSV activity by state
These hospitalization metrics give a practical signal of healthcare-system burden rather than total infections in the community.
What It Tells You
CDC NHSN Hospital Respiratory Data is useful for tracking whether respiratory illness is putting more pressure on hospitals in a given state. That makes it especially valuable for comparing relative activity across states and watching whether RSV or COVID-19 is rising or falling over time.
Limitations
- Hospital admissions lag behind infections in the community.
- This is not a direct count of all RSV or COVID-19 cases.
- Reporting practices can change over time, and hospital-based metrics reflect more serious illness than mild infections managed at home.
- Statewide hospital data is the best available broad signal, but it does not show neighborhood-level spread.