CDC Travel Health Notices Scraper
TRAVELNEWS
CDC Travel Health Notices Scraper
Scrapes all active CDC Travelers' Health destination notices — the health leg of corporate travel risk. Extracts structured data from the CDC RSS feed and notice detail pages, including alert level, disease or hazard, affected countries, key points, and recommendations.
What It Extracts
Each record includes:
| Field | Description |
|---|---|
notice_title |
Full notice title (e.g. "Ebola Bundibugyo Virus Disease in the Democratic Republic of the Congo") |
notice_level |
Numeric alert level: 1=Watch, 2=Alert, 3=Warning, 4=Avoid All Travel |
notice_level_label |
Human-readable label (e.g. "Level 3 - Reconsider Nonessential Travel") |
disease_or_hazard |
Disease or hazard type (e.g. "Dengue", "Chikungunya", "Marburg Virus Disease") |
affected_countries |
Comma-separated list of affected countries |
summary |
Brief summary from the RSS feed description |
recommendations_text |
Full recommendations extracted from the notice page |
key_points |
Key bullet points, pipe-separated |
issued_date |
Date the notice was first published (ISO 8601: YYYY-MM-DD) |
updated_date |
Date the notice was last reviewed or updated (ISO 8601: YYYY-MM-DD) |
status |
Notice status (active) |
link |
URL of the full notice on the CDC website |
source_id |
Unique slug identifier (e.g. level3/ebola-democratic-republic-of-the-congo) |
How It Works
The actor uses the CDC's public RSS feed (wwwnc.cdc.gov/travel/rss/notices.xml) for discovery, which lists all active notices with their publication dates. For each notice, it fetches the detail page to extract the alert level, key points, and full recommendations text.
- No authentication required
- No proxy needed — CDC is a public U.S. government site
- Politeness delay built in (3 concurrent requests max)
- Covers all active notices (~20–100 at any given time)
Input
| Parameter | Type | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
maxItems |
integer | 10 | Maximum number of notices to scrape. Leave unset to scrape all active notices. |
Use Cases
- Corporate duty-of-care: Monitor active health alerts affecting destinations where employees travel
- Travel risk platforms: Combine with State Department security advisories and FCDO advisories for comprehensive travel risk coverage
- Travel insurance: Detect outbreak conditions that may affect policy eligibility or coverage
- Travel clinics: Track active disease advisories for pre-travel consultation
- Research / epidemiology: Track the history and scope of CDC travel health alerts
Notice Levels
| Level | Label | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Watch | Practice usual precautions |
| 2 | Alert | Practice enhanced precautions |
| 3 | Warning | Reconsider nonessential travel |
| 4 | (rare) | Avoid all travel |
Data Source
All data sourced from the CDC Travelers' Health website, a public service of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This actor is not affiliated with or endorsed by the CDC.