Herpes is not a nationally notifiable disease in the United States. Unlike chlamydia, gonorrhea, syphilis, and HIV, which must be reported to public health authorities in every state, genital herpes (HSV-2) and oral herpes (HSV-1) have no federal reporting requirement. Your doctor is not obligated to notify the CDC or your local health department if you test positive.
What “Reportable” and “Notifiable” Mean
These two terms overlap but aren’t identical. A reportable disease is one that your state requires healthcare providers and laboratories to report to the local health department when they diagnose it. Each state sets its own list, and these lists change from year to year. A notifiable disease is one that the CDC and the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists track at the national level. States voluntarily share case data with the CDC, stripped of personally identifiable information, so the agency can monitor outbreaks and public health trends. The national notifiable list includes roughly 120 diseases and conditions.
Herpes simplex virus appears on neither the national notifiable list nor on the reportable disease lists of most states. The federal STI National Strategic Plan originally focused only on nationally notifiable STIs with federally funded control programs, and herpes was explicitly excluded from that scope.
Why Herpes Isn’t Reported
The main reason is practical: herpes is extraordinarily common, and most people who carry it don’t know they have it. Nearly 12% of Americans aged 14 to 49 have HSV-2, and almost 48% carry HSV-1. The majority of people infected with HSV-2 have never been diagnosed. Many have mild or unrecognized infections but still shed the virus intermittently, meaning most transmission happens when the person spreading it has no visible symptoms and no idea they’re contagious.
That combination of high prevalence and widespread undiagnosed infection makes individual case reporting impractical. A reporting system would capture only the fraction of people who happen to get tested and diagnosed, producing data that wouldn’t accurately reflect the true burden of the disease. For infections like syphilis and gonorrhea, case reporting helps public health teams trace contacts, interrupt outbreaks, and direct resources. For herpes, the sheer volume of cases and the lifelong nature of the infection make that model unworkable.
The Exception: Neonatal Herpes
There is one important exception. Herpes in newborns, called neonatal herpes, is reportable in a small number of states. As of 2023, only six states require it: Florida, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Nebraska, New York, and Washington. No national surveillance system for neonatal herpes exists. In New York, for example, laboratories must report positive herpes results in infants 60 days old or younger, and they’re required to submit the original specimens for confirmation.
Neonatal herpes is far more dangerous than adult herpes. Babies can acquire the virus during delivery, and the infection can affect the brain, organs, and skin. The reporting requirements in those six states help public health officials track how often this happens and identify patterns that might improve prevention.
What Gets Reported Instead
Five STIs are reportable in every U.S. state: syphilis (including congenital syphilis), gonorrhea, chlamydia, chancroid, and HIV. When a clinician diagnoses any of these, they’re legally required to notify the local health department, typically with the patient’s name. Beyond that core list, individual states can add other conditions. Clinicians are expected to know the specific reporting rules in their jurisdiction, since the requirements for less common STIs vary from state to state.
In some states, herpes does appear in health regulations in a limited way. New York, for instance, classifies genital herpes as a “Group B” sexually transmitted disease, which means STI treatment facilities must offer diagnosis and treatment for it. But that classification doesn’t trigger mandatory case reporting to public health authorities the way a gonorrhea or syphilis diagnosis would.
What This Means for Your Privacy
Because herpes isn’t reportable, a positive test result stays within your medical record and isn’t forwarded to any government health registry. No public health investigator will contact you, and no partner notification process is triggered by the health department. This is different from what happens with, say, syphilis, where health departments actively reach out to help notify sexual partners.
The flip side is that public health agencies have limited data on herpes. The CDC estimates prevalence using periodic national health surveys rather than case-by-case reporting. This is why herpes statistics tend to come from broad population studies rather than real-time surveillance. The most recent national data, from 2015 to 2016, showed HSV-2 prevalence had actually declined over the previous two decades, dropping from 18% in 1999-2000 to about 12%. Without a reporting system, though, these estimates come with a significant time lag and can’t capture local trends the way surveillance data does for gonorrhea or chlamydia.
Prevalence by Age and Sex
HSV-2 prevalence rises steadily with age because the virus is lifelong once acquired. Among 14- to 19-year-olds, fewer than 1% test positive. That climbs to about 8% in the 20 to 29 age group, 13% among 30- to 39-year-olds, and 21% among those aged 40 to 49. Women are roughly twice as likely as men to have HSV-2, with an age-adjusted prevalence of about 16% compared to 8% in men. This gap likely reflects biological factors that make female-to-male transmission less efficient than male-to-female transmission.
Prevalence also varies significantly by race and ethnicity, with non-Hispanic Black Americans showing the highest rates at about 35%, compared to roughly 8% among non-Hispanic white Americans and 9% among Mexican Americans. These disparities have persisted even as overall prevalence has declined across all groups.