Respiratory virus season is upon us, so the Putnam County Department of Health wants to let residents know of a convenient way to stay informed about respiratory virus activity in the county: a Respiratory Virus Surveillance Dashboard. Launched earlier this year, the dashboard was designed to give healthcare providers easy access to local disease data to inform clinical practice. Available to anyone on the Putnam County website, it provides information on three common causes of respiratory illness —influenza, COVID-19, and RSV — in one convenient location.

The Respiratory Virus Dashboard is updated weekly all year long. Information available on the dashboard includes case counts for all three illnesses, whether cases are going up or down, and which age groups and areas of the county are seeing more illness. The dashboard is interactive, allowing users to customize their view of the information. Users can view one, two, or all three illnesses and compare them to last year’s case counts or do the same for incidence rates by age. Explore the dashboard at putnamcountyny.gov/respdash. Also new this year, NYSDOH will publish a weekly report detailing activity of influenza, COVID-19, and RSV at the regional and state level. This report can be found visiting health.ny.gov/diseases/communicable/respiratory_viruses/ and scrolling down to Data and Trends.