Data
Microproduct Data Guidebeginner

CDC NWSS Wastewater Data

Weekly U.S. wastewater viral detections for influenza A and other pathogens for building community-level respiratory-illness monitoring tools.

Start the Guide Open Official Source Open in Colab
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At a Glance

Difficulty
Beginner — comfortable for a first prototype
Size
Small · ≤0.1 GB
Formats
JSON, CSV
Access
API or Download
API Key
Not Required
Provider
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Updates
Weekly
Last Verified
Aug 20, 2026
Source Type
Government source
Data Terms
U.S. Public Domain with CDC attribution and use requirements
  • Python syntax checked
  • Runnable notebook

From Source to Product Signal

Test a Product Idea in Four Steps

NWSS publishes site-level wastewater viral detections on data.cdc.gov. Start with a few recent influenza A rows. Coverage is incomplete — not every utility reports — and detections are not clinical 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 wastewater about-data page and note sewershed coverage gaps.
  2. 2.Request a bounded JSON extract from the Influenza A wastewater dataset.
  3. 3.Keep site, county, sample date, and detection fields 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/ymmh-divb.json",
    params={"$limit": 20, "$order": "sample_collect_date DESC"},
    timeout=30,
)
response.raise_for_status()
wastewater = pd.DataFrame(response.json())
wastewater["retrieved_at_utc"] = pd.Timestamp.now(tz="UTC")
print(
    wastewater[
        [
            "site",
            "state_territory",
            "counties_served",
            "sample_collect_date",
            "pcr_target",
            "pcr_target_detect",
        ]
    ].head(20)
)
4

Test a Useful Signal

Flag recent influenza A wastewater detections

Test whether recent site-level influenza A detections can power a bounded community alert.

  1. 01Inspect site, county, sample date, and pcr_target_detect for the latest rows.
  2. 02Count detections by state and note sites with missing counties or population served.
  3. 03Explain that wastewater detections are not case counts and that unsewered communities are missing.

Related Datasets

Dataset Details

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is a government source. Last verified 2026-08-20. Temporal coverage: site-level wastewater samples from 2022-present.

Geography

United States

Formats

JSONCSV

Provider

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Data Terms

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

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