Microproduct data guidebeginner

CDC FluView ILINet

Weekly outpatient influenza-like illness activity for building seasonal respiratory-illness monitors.

Start the guide Open official source

At a glance

Difficulty
Beginner — comfortable for a first prototype
Size
Tiny · ≤0.05 GB
Formats
JSON, CSV
Access
API or Download
API key
Not required
Provider
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Updates
Weekly
Data terms
U.S. Public Domain with CDC attribution and use requirements

From source to product signal

Test a product idea in four steps

FluView publishes ILINet outpatient respiratory-illness activity on data.cdc.gov. Start with a few recent weeks. ILI is syndromic — fever plus cough or sore throat — not laboratory-confirmed influenza incidence.

1

Check the setup

  • Python 3.10 or newer
  • A notebook environment such as Jupyter or Google Colab
  • An internet connection
2

Access the data

  1. 1.Read the FluView methods page and note that ILINet is outpatient syndromic surveillance.
  2. 2.Request a bounded JSON extract from the Outpatient Respiratory Illness Activity Map dataset.
  3. 3.Keep geography, week, and activity level with the retrieval timestamp.
Open official source
3

Run the Python example

Install the packages, then run the notebook cell.

python -m pip install pandas requests

import pandas as pd
import requests

response = requests.get(
    "https://data.cdc.gov/resource/6svj-q4zv.json",
    params={"$limit": 20, "$order": "week_ending DESC"},
    timeout=30,
)
response.raise_for_status()
ili = pd.DataFrame(response.json())
ili["retrieved_at_utc"] = pd.Timestamp.now(tz="UTC")
print(ili.head(20))
4

Test a useful signal

Compare recent state ILI activity levels

Test whether weekly activity categories can power a bounded flu-season dashboard.

  1. 01Inspect the returned geography and week fields and keep the latest week.
  2. 02Count states by activity level and note missing jurisdictions.
  3. 03Explain that ILINet captures any matching respiratory illness and is not confirmed flu incidence.

Dataset details

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is a government source. Last verified 2026-08-17. Temporal coverage: weekly surveillance seasons from the late 1990s.

Theme

Health, Food & Safety

Domains

Public HealthInfectious Disease

Data types

Time SeriesTabularSurvey Estimates

Tasks

Trend AnalysisAlertingRegional Comparison

Geography

United States

Formats

JSONCSV

Provider

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Data terms

U.S. Public Domain with CDC attribution and use requirements