The Office of Epidemiology, in partnership with health departments throughout Virginia, is responsible for the ongoing statewide surveillance of reportable diseases. Disease surveillance is the collection, analysis, interpretation, and dissemination of health-related data that is used to inform public health actions to reduce illness.
This report summarizes surveillance data for diseases and conditions listed as reportable in the Virginia Regulations for Disease Reporting and Control and reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) each year. Included in this report is a brief description of each disease, a map of disease incidence rate by locality or region, and a graph of reported cases each year for up to ten years and the 5-year averages. Additional visualizations show disease data by age group, sex, and race for the year.
For more information on disease reporting in Virginia, see the Disease Reporting and Control Regulations webpage.
This dashboard provides summary data for most reportable conditions in Virginia; however, some conditions have their own data pages:
- Congenital Syphilis (see STD Data/Reports)
- Mpox
- Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome
- Respiratory Disease
- Tuberculosis
Sources of information include the Virginia Electronic Disease Surveillance System (VEDSS) database, Maven surveillance system, eHARS surveillance system, the CDC, Red Book: 2021 Report of the Committee on Infectious Diseases (American Academy of Pediatrics, Kimberlin, D., Barnett, E., Lynfield, R.; Sawyer, M. eds., 2021), and Control of Communicable Diseases Manual, 21st Edition (Heymann, D., ed., 2022)
For more information visit:
- To download these datasets, visit:
The Office of Epidemiology hopes that the readers of this report will find it to be a valuable resource for understanding the epidemiology of reportable diseases in Virginia. Any questions or suggestions about this report may be directed to surveillance@vdh.virginia.gov.
- The Geography Locator Tool can be used to identify Virginia’s localities, health districts, and health planning regions.
- Conditions with an annual case count fewer than 20 are mapped at the region level to preserve patient anonymity.
- If available data is insufficient to calculate a 5-year average, the 5-year average is not shown.
- Population data have been adjusted to represent the specific population under surveillance when data are restricted to certain age groups, including invasive Streptococcus pneumoniae infection (less than 5 years of age).
- Population-based incidence rates are presented to provide a measure of disease frequency in the population and to allow for comparisons between groups. When calculating incidence rates, population data prepared by the United States Census Bureau for the state’s localities (cities and counties) were used. The population data used to calculate incidence rates are based on bridged race population estimates from the National Center for Health Statistics using the prior year’s population (e.g., 2021 surveillance data uses 2020 NCHS population data).
- Race is usually presented as Black, White, or Other. The “Other” race category includes persons reported as Asian/Pacific Islanders, American Indians, Alaskan Natives, or multi-racial persons.
- Patient Sex is reported as Female, Male or Unknown, as reported to VDH.
- Patient race and sex are displayed at the most granular level consistently available based on historical reporting processes. Future reports might offer expanded data on patient race, ethnicity, and gender or sex.
- Report date reflects the CDC MMWR year (i.e., the date the case was reported to the health department). This may be different than the date of illness onset or diagnosis.
- Rates by locality are calculated based on residence of the patient, when known. When the address of the patient is neither reported by the health care provider nor ascertained by the health department, the location of the reporting source, such as the physician, hospital, or laboratory, is used.