This is the time of year when we start closing out all of our infectious disease data from the previous year. That means our epidemiology and data entry staff will be hard at work to identify potential duplicate cases, make sure reported disease cases are classified correctly and similarly between the state and local health departments, and finalize our year end numbers to make a final report to CDC and the Arizona public.
If you can’t wait for the final reports of 2015 disease cases to come out, you can check out our data and statistics webpage for preliminary counts of selected infectious diseases. Here you can find year-to-date summaries comparing this year’s counts to last years and the five-year median, and you can also find year-to-date preliminary counts by county.
Some highlights from the preliminary numbers include:
- Fewer pertussis cases were reported in 2015 and 2014 compared with the five-year median; however, the number of confirmed cases was up in 2015.
- We’ve seen increased numbers of most foodborne diseases in 2015 compared to 2014, including Campylobacter, E. coli, Giardia, Salmonella, Shigella, and Hepatitis A.
- Chikungunya cases were up in 2015 compared with 2014, but dengue cases were down .
- We’ve seen increases in reported cases of chlamydia and gonorrhea in 2015, but decreases in syphilis.
