November 21, 2024

Dear USET/USET SPF Family,     

The USET Office of Tribal Public Health (OTPH) is committed to bringing pertinent information to USET member Tribal Nations. OTPH now offers a weekly USET Area Seasonal Respiratory Illnesses Report. The data is sourced from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Protect, and the Indian Health Service (IHS). This data aims to provide a general overview on the current incidence of COVID-19, influenza and vaccination rates across the United States, within the Indian Health Service Areas, and specifically within the IHS Nashville Area.

USET Offices will be closed on November 28 and 29, to celebrate Day of Thanks and Native American Heritage Day. Due to these holidays, OTPH will not issue a Respiratory Report for next week, MMWR week 46. OTPH will resume the Respiratory Report the following week, December 5, 2024, for MMWR Week 47.

Below are highlighted metrics from this week's USET OTPH Weekly Area Seasonal Respiratory Illness Report. To view the full report, please click here. 

MMWR Week 45 (November 03 – November 09, 2024) 

The respiratory virus season begins each year on the Sunday of MMWR week 40. For the 2024-2025 respiratory season, week 40 began on September 29, 2024.  

Data is reported in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR). Each MMWR week is a seven-day period known as an epidemiological week, starting on Sunday and ending on Saturday. The 365 days of the year are divided into up to 53 epidemiological weeks, forming what is known as the epidemiological year, a standard tool used by surveillance epidemiologists.

Each week, local and state health departments submit reportable and notifiable disease data (both infectious and non-infectious) to the National Notifiable Disease Surveillance System (NNDSS), a nationwide collaboration. The CDC disseminates this data through weekly electronic tables and reports via the CDC Wide-ranging Online Data for Epidemiologic Research (WONDER) system and Data.cdc.gov.

Please review the document, “ Additional Information on Data Sources,” for a more detailed summary of the data and the sources. Current and historic USET TEC surveillance reports are linked on the USET website here. As always, if you would like a report that tracks different statistics, or if you have questions regarding this report, please do not hesitate to contact to usetepi@usetinc.org.

Established in 1969, the United South and Eastern Tribes, Inc. (USET) is a non-profit, inter-Tribal organization serving thirty-three (33) federally recognized Tribal Nations from the Northeastern Woodlands to the Everglades and across the Gulf of Mexico. USET is dedicated to enhancing the development of Tribal Nations, improving the capabilities of Tribal governments, and improving the quality of life for Indian people through a variety of technical and supportive programmatic services.