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Map shows county-by-county risk of encountering COVID-19 at an event

A professor in the School of Biological Sciences at Georgia Tech is behind the tool.

ATLANTA — A new tool developed by Georgia Tech allows people to look up their risk of encountering COVID-19 at an event, based on the county they live in.

The interactive map allows users to choose a county anywhere in the United States, choose the event size (anywhere from 10 people to 10,000), and then calculate the risk that at least one COVID-19 positive person will be present.

For example, in Fulton County the tool calculates that at a 100-person event, there is an 99% chance that someone in attendance will be COVID-positive. At a gathering with only 25 people, that risk goes down to 66%. 

In Cobb County, at an event with 10 people, the map calculates that there is a 29% chance that someone in attendance will be COVID-positive. 

To view the map, click here

The interactive map is based on data from The COVID Tracking Project at The Atlantic, which pulls daily data on COVID-19 testing and patients from all 50 states. It's also based on 2019 U.S. Census data. 

Previously, the dashboard estimated exposure for different size events by state. Now it has the ability to calculate county-level risk of attending an event with someone actively infected with coronavirus. 

The tool is the work of Joshua Weitz, professor in the School of Biological Sciences and founding director of Georgia Tech’s Ph.D. in Quantitative Biosciences program, in collaboration with the lab of Clio Andris, an assistant professor in the School of City and Regional Planning with a joint appointment in the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Tech, and with researchers from the Applied Bioinformatics Laboratory. 

“We have developed an interactive county-level map of the risk that one or more individuals may have Covid-19 in events of different sizes,” Weitz said. “The issue of understanding risks associated with gatherings is even more relevant as many kinds of businesses, including sports and universities, are considering how to re-open safely.”

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