By Tim Mastro

DOVER — The Delaware Division of Public Health has launched a flu dashboard on its My Healthy Community site to share weekly and seasonal data.

The flu dashboard will provide statistics on positive cases, hospitalizations and deaths. It will also share vaccination data, which is the first time the division is making this data available.

The division said in a statement the dashboard is intended to provide an accurate picture of flu activity among Delawareans, and make influenza data readily and easily available.

Updates will occur weekly on Thursdays for local data and month for other geographies.

“The portal has become most well-known for providing real-time COVID-19 data. Now we can bring that same level of detail and transparency to the public with flu data as well,” Public Health interim director Dr. Rick Hong said in a statement.

The launch of the dashboard comes as flu cases have soared dramatically. For the week of Oct. 23-29, the most recent time for which data is available, there were 172 laboratory-confirmed flu cases in the state bringing the season total to 254.

The number of lab-confirmed cases is likely an under-representation of the total level of flu in the community, according to the division as many medical providers offer rapid flu tests in their offices and that data is not consistently reported.

No flu-related deaths have been reported in Delaware as of the latest dataset on Oct. 29.