Socializing? Online tool can tell you COVID-19 risk for your crowd size

There’s a new tool available to help you assess your risk of contracting COVID-19 when you gather in a social setting. An interactive map designed by the Georgia Institute of Technology breaks down the risk in each of Utah’s counties based on the crowd size.

The Utah Department of Health and Gov. Gary Herbert have recently limited crowd size in a social gathering to 10 people and the interactive map gives you your chance of getting coronavirus based on that — or any other — crowd size.

Herbert said the COVID-19 danger is as great now as any time since March at a recent press conference. “It’s getting old. People are getting tired, we’re getting frustrated, we’re getting angry and we’re getting depressed,” said Herbert.

The Georgia Institute map breaks down the coronavirus risk by every single county in the country based on health data. The map estimates the chances of at least one person in the crowd of an event you attend who has coronavirus. Using the interactive options, you pick the size of the crowd at the event and the map give you your chances of exposure. The map also asks you to pick what’s called an “ascertainment bias,” which is an assumption that not everyone who has coronavirus was tested.

Based on the state-mandated crowd size, the map shows that if you attend an event that has 10 people in Salt Lake County, there is a 30 percent chance someone in that crowd is COVID-positive. In Washington County the chances are pegged at 24 percent, Grand County (Moab) sits at 20 percent and Uintah County shows a 12 percent exposure chance. According to the map, you have less than a 1 percent chance of running into someone with the virus in a crowd of 10 in Daggett County.

You can check out any county in the country at https://covid19risk.biosci.gatech.edu/.