Estimate your risk of COVID exposure at Tri-Cities events with this dashboard

If you plan to attend an event in Franklin County with 25 people, there’s an estimated 91% chance that someone there will be infected with COVID-19.

In Benton County the likelihood of being exposed to someone with COVID-19 if you attend an event with 25 people, is lower. But it is still 61%.

That’s according to a county-by-county dashboard developed for the United States by the Georgia Institute of Technology.

In Benton and Franklin counties, gatherings of nonhousehold members continue to be banned, unless they are a group of five or fewer people attending a behavioral health event, such as an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.

But numerous groups continue to gather against state orders, including for sports events and tournaments, for rallies and protests, and to socialize and be entertained.

The Georgia Tech site can help people calculate their risk of being exposed, starting with gatherings of as few as 10 nonhousehold members.

It also is intended to help with decisions on how businesses and schools should reopen.

Gaps in testing

“The issue of undertaking risks associated with gatherings is even more relevant as many kinds of businesses, including sports and universities, are considering how to reopen safely,” said Joshua Weitz, a professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Biological Sciences.

The calculations account for widespread gaps in U.S. testing for the coronavirus, which can be spread by infected people who have mild or no symptoms.

The dashboard takes the number of cases reported by state health officials in the past two weeks in each county and multiplies them by an under-testing factor to estimate the number of circulating cases in a particular county, Weitz said.

Georgia Tech referred to a statement made by Robert Redfield, direct of the Centers For Disease Control, in late June that antibody tests show that about 10 times more people have antibodies than there were previous documented infections in particular areas.

In Benton County a gathering of 10 people likely would have a 31% chance of having a person with COVID-19 present, the dashboard calculated on Friday.

In Franklin County the chances would increase to 61%, it said.

Estimates are updated daily.

If 50 people gather the chances of a person being infected in Benton County is estimated at 87% and increases to 99% in Franklin County.

For a gathering of 100 people, there’s a 98% chance in Benton County and the dashboard tops out at an estimated greater than 99% for Franklin County.

If you are planning on traveling — which is not recommended — the dashboard shows the risk of infection for the majority of counties across the nation at gatherings of different sizes.

The dashboard is at covid19risk.biosci.gatech.edu.