Biological & Public Health
Biological Card Explained
The Biological card summarizes elevated public-health surveillance areas. It is a public-signal card, not a medical diagnosis or personal-risk score.
Quick read
- Useful for
- Respiratory illness, wastewater, and hospital burden signals can help users understand community context and verify official health guidance.
- Watch
- elevated areas, severity, source, week ending, value, coverage, elevated rule, source attribution, confidence, and data limitations.
- Confirm with
- CDC Wastewater Viral Activity Levels and CDC Respiratory Illnesses
- Remember
- Surveillance data can lag, be incomplete, and differ by jurisdiction. It is not medical advice.
How to read this card
- Value: count of elevated biological areas/features currently shown for the map layer.
- Context: Elevated areas, meaning public-health source categories exceeded the dashboard elevated rule.
- Severity: popup label such as Low/Medium/High/Very High or source-normalized equivalent.
- Elevated rule: popup field showing the rule, commonly High / Very High.
Hover card and popup metrics explained
- Severity: source-normalized public-health activity level.
- Source: source label such as CDC wastewater, respiratory illness, NHSN/hospital data, or data portal feed.
- Week ending: reporting week date, often delayed from current day.
- Value: source-provided value label, which may be viral activity, ARI/ED activity, admissions rate, or event count depending on layer.
- Coverage: coverage flag; limited or partial coverage lowers confidence.
- Source attribution: longer public-source family label.
- Supplemental info: popup fields add detail but should not be interpreted as patient-level medical advice.
What can make this status change?
- A source reports High or Very High activity for more/fewer areas.
- A new reporting week arrives or old data becomes stale.
- Coverage improves or worsens.
- Different source families disagree, changing confidence rather than proving a trend.
Limitations
Biological surveillance is delayed, uneven by geography, and method-dependent. Wastewater can rise before clinical data; hospital admissions can lag. The card is informational and should be verified with health departments and clinicians for decisions.
Sources and update behavior
The dashboard reads cached biological aggregates from public CDC-style sources. Reporting is usually weekly or delayed, with source-specific lags and coverage limitations.
Visual reference
Biological card signal map
Read the signal as one layer in a larger source stack, not as a standalone instruction.
Official/public sources
Use these links to verify current source text, update timing, and agency caveats.
FAQ
What does elevated mean?
In the current UI, elevated map features generally reflect High or Very High source categories or equivalent elevated rules shown in the popup.