Using the desk
A clearer view of what is happening.
Find an event, understand its evidence and follow the updates that matter to you.
Start with the map
The Events view shows reviewed public-health events. Select a point or an event in the list to open its location, current evidence, dated case figures and original sources. The News view explores locations mentioned in collected reporting. A news marker is not a confirmed infection.
Make it your view
- Choose diseases. Turn individual layers on or off, or use the all and none controls.
- Search. Find disease names, countries, places, report headlines and publishers. Search covers the collected index, not the full text of every article on the internet.
- Narrow the results. Combine country, date, source and event-status filters. Clear filters to return to the global view.
- Share the view. Your filter choices are stored in the page address. Copy the address to share the same selection.
Read the numbers with their dates
Every clinical figure belongs to a place, reporting period and case definition. Confirmed cases, suspected cases and deaths are not interchangeable. A cumulative total is not the number of people currently infected. A missing number means it was not available in the reviewed evidence; it does not mean zero.
Country and regional totals can overlap. Outbreak Desk does not add these together into a misleading worldwide total.
Understand the labels
- Confirmed event: the linked evidence establishes a case, cluster or outbreak.
- Imported case: an identified case acquired elsewhere; this alone does not establish local transmission.
- Not confirmed: the linked evidence does not establish the reported diagnosis. Read the summary to distinguish an unresolved investigation from a claim rejected by the source.
- Seasonal surveillance: reporting across a season or monitoring area.
- No active cases reported: the cited source reports no active cases for the place and period shown. This does not by itself establish an official outbreak closure.
Check freshness
The source check time shows when our server last retrieved a feed. The publication date comes from the publisher. The clinical “as of” date describes the period covered by a number. These dates can differ.
News collection is scheduled every 15 minutes; official feeds are normally checked hourly. The open monitor refreshes saved results every minute. Reviewed event summaries and clinical figures have their own review dates. Opening the site does not force an authority to publish new data.
Keep exploring
Disease library · Source connections · Methodology · Inspect the code