Virginia Communicable Disease Data

The Office of Epidemiology compiles communicable disease data reported by healthcare providers, hospitals, and laboratories. This information is used to monitor, control, and prevent reportable diseases and other health conditions in communities.

Some communicable diseases are nationally notifiable; data on nationally notifiable conditions are sent to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) so they can be tracked for the whole country. Using standardized surveillance case definitions, public health officials can classify and count cases consistently across reporting jurisdictions.

Communicable disease surveillance data captures information to understand: 

• Who is impacted (i.e., age, sex, race and ethnicity of cases); 
• How they are impacted (i.e., clinical illness experienced and care received); 
• What diseases are occurring and how commonly they occur; 
• How disease trends change over time; and 
• Where diseases are occurring (i.e., geographic distribution).