The CDC number for confirmed and probable cases of swine flu in the US should be over 6700 today. This is based on the numbers being reported by the state web sites (when available), which differ considerably in places from the CDC numbers. The CDC's own stance is clearly stated on their daily reports:

Because of daily reporting deadlines, the state totals reported by CDC may not always be consistent with those reported by state health departments. If there is a discrepancy between these two counts, data from the state health departments should be used as the most accurate number.

So, the 6700+ number is the more accurate one than the CDC's 5764. That is a thousand cases difference. The state number is more than 15% higher than the CDC's. Could that just be one day's worth of cases? Yes and no. Certainly, there have been a few hundred new cases each days, but a thousand in one day would be pretty high for where we are. Regardless, that is not entirely the case here. Some of the differences have been shown on the state web sites for several days and the CDC simply has not bothered to update their numbers to correspond.

For example, Texas is only reporting numbers on Tuesday and Friday. Today is Friday, but the CDC is still reporting last Friday's numbers with no sign of Tuesday's number, which showed an of 138 cases. Similar situations exist in other states.

Here are where the numbers are today. The second column is the CDC's numbers from yesterday. The third is either the state number or the CDC number, depending on which was higher. The fourth is the difference. The reason for the oddness in the third column is that some states are not putting their numbers on their web sites anymore; some never did.

While most of the differences are pretty tiny, the bigger ones are significant and tend to be in the states where the virus is spreading the quickest.

As to why the CDC is not putting the latest information in their briefings, I am not sure. It certainly cannot be because they don't have the numbers. I am not even part of the medical community and I have the numbers. It can't be that they don't have the time to assemble the numbers. It took me a whopping half hour to get up to date numbers from the state web sites; if I were doing it regularly in a spreadsheet, it would have taken half that. This is what interns are for, people.

I am not going to go all tin-foil-hat on people and assume this is some conspiracy to keep us from knowing the true extent. The difference is conspicuous, but not insanely so. Nobody bothers covering up a 17% difference. As unpleasant as it sounds, I think we need to chalk this one up to either apathy or incompetence on the part of whomever is assembling these reports. Which is unimportant. The important lesson is to be aware of what the true situation is in your state and not just trust the first numbers you see to be up to date.