North Carolina Respiratory Virus Summary Dashboard
This dashboard is a resource for tracking and understanding the spread of respiratory illness, including COVID-19, flu (influenza), and RSV, in North Carolina.
New for the 2024-2025 respiratory season: This dashboard includes summary information about COVID-19 wastewater monitoring. As the respiratory season continues, we'll add wastewater monitoring data for more respiratory illnesses.
This data updates weekly from the North Carolina Disease Event Tracking and Epidemiologic Collection Tool. NC DETECT is our statewide syndromic surveillance system.
For more information on the data shown here and why they’re important, see "These Measures and Why They Were Chosen."
Vaccines work. People with the updated vaccine are 18.6 times less likely to die from COVID-19. This is even the case for people with weaker immune systems, like those over 80 years old.
These Measures and Why They Were Chosen
This metric shows the percent of emergency department visits that are for a diagnosis of flu (influenza – ICD-9/ICD-10 codes) or symptoms and diagnosis of COVID-19, RSV and acute respiratory illnesses.
This metric can give us an early indication of rising levels of respiratory illness in the community, and early insight into the burden on local emergency departments. The trend of increases and decreases can show the potential risk of exposure.
More detailed data is available on the Detailed Respiratory Virus Surveillance Dashboard.
This metric shows the number of hospital admissions from emergency departments for a diagnosis of flu (influenza – ICD-9/ICD-10 codes) or symptoms and diagnosis of COVID-19, RSV, and acute respiratory illnesses. Hospital admissions for respiratory illnesses give an understanding of the impact on the health care system. When this number is high, it can mean that hospitals are strained to provide care and may not be able provide care for non-urgent medical procedures.
NCDHHS is testing samples of wastewater from select treatments plants across the state to look for COVID-19. This metric helps us understand spread of COVID-19 at the community level.
People with COVID-19 shed viral particles in their stool. In wastewater, the particles are no longer infectious but can still be measured. Research suggests that the virus that causes COVID-19 can appear in wastewater 4-6 days before the first cases are identified and can serve as an early warning indicator before changes are seen in other metrics. Levels of Influenza and RSV can also be detected in wastewater. More detailed data is available on the Wastewater Monitoring Dashboard.