Florida flu & respiratory illness tracker

Wondering what illnesses are going around Florida right now? Florida publishes its own weekly respiratory-virus surveillance — flu, RSV, and COVID-19 — on top of national CDC data. This page is a guide to every official feed: what each one measures, where to read it, and how it lands at the county level for the metros that drive most of the population's exposure. It points you to the live sources rather than publishing a case count of its own.

The state-level feed

The Florida Department of Health (FDOH) publishes a weekly Florida Respiratory Illness Surveillance report. It aggregates emergency-department visits for influenza-like illness (ILI), laboratory-confirmed flu and RSV cases, school absenteeism patterns, and outbreak reports from long-term-care facilities. Updates land Fridays for the week ending the previous Saturday. ED-visit signals lead lab-confirmation signals by 1–2 weeks and are the fastest read on community spread.

Florida's surveillance is structured by RESS (Respiratory Surveillance System) regions, which roughly group counties around major hospital referral catchments. The state-level report flags which RESS regions are in "high activity" each week — useful if your area of interest spans several counties (Greater Orlando, Tampa Bay, South Florida, the Panhandle).

National feeds with Florida-state breakdowns

CDC Respiratory Virus Data Dashboard — combined readout of flu, RSV, and COVID-19 activity. State-level slices for Florida; weekly cadence.
CDC National Wastewater Surveillance System (NWSS) — SARS-CoV-2, flu, and RSV RNA at participating Florida treatment plants. Wastewater leads case-count signals by 4–10 days. Florida participates in multiple metros (Orlando, Tampa, Miami, Jacksonville).
CDC FluView — the historical-record weekly flu surveillance dashboard. Florida lab-confirmation rates by HHS region (Region 4 covers the Southeast including Florida).
CDC National Syndromic Surveillance Program (NSSP) — daily ED-visit counts for respiratory syndromes. Faster than the weekly state report; noisier signal.

Where Florida's surveillance pattern is distinctive

Florida's respiratory-illness season has a few features worth knowing if you're reading the data:

Tourist-driven early-season cases. International visitors (theme parks, cruise ports) introduce flu strains before community spread is established in Florida-resident populations. Early-season lab-confirmation rates often outpace ILI rates because ED encounters concentrate at hospitals near attractions.
Long-term-care facility load. Florida has one of the highest concentrations of skilled-nursing and assisted-living facilities in the U.S. FDOH outbreak reports are heavily weighted toward LTCF events. A statewide outbreak-report number is often dominated by facility-level clusters rather than community spread.
Hurricane-season disruption. Tropical events disrupt both routine surveillance reporting and the underlying behavior (evacuations, shelter cohorts) that drives transmission. Reports published in the weeks after a major storm should be read with that context.
Late-fall respiratory + air-quality overlap. Florida's ozone season extends into November and prescribed-burn season begins in December. Both stress the same respiratory baseline that flu and RSV target. See when poor air quality compounds infection for the biology, and Smog Report for real-time AQI from EPA AirNow monitors.

Resources for Florida families

Two independent tools that pair well with surveillance data:

Smog Report — real-time AQI from EPA AirNow regulatory monitors. Free iOS app + web. Useful during Florida's summer ozone season, Saharan Air Layer dust events (June–July), prescribed burns (Dec–April), and sugar-cane harvest burns in the Glades (Oct–April).
Florida air quality guide — a plain-language breakdown of the Florida-specific seasonal pattern (ozone, Saharan dust, prescribed burns, red-tide aerosols, hurricane CO risk).
Sunshine State Reader — free iOS reading tracker for the Florida Association for Media in Education's Sunshine State Young Readers Award program. Useful for Florida families with elementary-age kids stuck inside during a heavy respiratory-illness wave or a smoke event.

Florida respiratory illness — FAQ

What illnesses are going around Florida right now?

The fastest read on what's circulating in Florida is the Florida Department of Health's weekly Respiratory Illness Surveillance report, which tracks flu, RSV, and COVID-19 activity by region, plus the CDC Respiratory Virus Data Dashboard for state-level flu/RSV/COVID trends. During respiratory-virus season (roughly November through March) influenza, RSV, and COVID-19 dominate; norovirus (stomach bug) activity also rises in the cooler months. This page links every official Florida feed so you can check the current week yourself — it does not publish a live case count of its own.

Is there a Florida flu tracker?

Yes. Florida's official flu tracker is the FDOH weekly Florida Respiratory Illness Surveillance report, which reports influenza-like-illness emergency-department visits, lab-confirmed flu and RSV, and outbreak reports by surveillance region. The CDC FluView dashboard and CDC Respiratory Virus Data Dashboard add national context with Florida-state breakdowns. All three are linked below with what each one measures and how quickly it updates.

When is flu and RSV season in Florida?

Florida's respiratory-virus season broadly runs from late fall through early spring, typically peaking December through February, but it is less sharply seasonal than in northern states and can see earlier, tourism-driven flu introductions around theme parks and cruise ports. RSV tends to lead flu by a few weeks. Because Florida's ozone and prescribed-burn seasons overlap the tail of respiratory season, air quality can compound respiratory illness — see the linked air-quality guidance below.

What this page is not

This is a reference for navigating publicly-available surveillance feeds. It is not medical advice; clinical decisions should always go to a qualified healthcare professional. Pandemic Watch is independent and not affiliated with FDOH, CDC, or any healthcare provider.