What are the chances someone at your Tri-Cities Thanksgiving table will have COVID?

If you plan to meet with friends or relatives for Thanksgiving in the Tri-Cities, there’s a chance you will be sharing the table with someone currently infected with the coronavirus.

Two weeks ahead of the holiday and with infections rising, a Georgia Institute of Technology risk estimator calculates that if you attend a gathering as small as 10 people in the Tri-Cities, there is an 18% chance that one person will have COVID-19.

The larger the gathering, the larger the chance.

If the event has 15 people, the estimated chance jumps to 26% in Benton County and 25% in Franklin County.

At 25 people, the risk jumps to 40% in Benton County and 38% in Franklin County.

With 100 people, the chance that an infected person will be among the crowd is 87% in Benton and 85% in Franklin County, shows the estimator.

Public health officials are urging people not only to stick to celebrating the holidays only with household members, but also not to travel.

But if you do, infection rates vary across counties in Washington state, with the Georgia Institute of Technology estimator showing Walla Walla County as currently posing the largest risk for infection.

In a gathering of 10 people, there’s a 32% chance that someone will have the virus in Walla Walla County.

That drops to 17% in Spokane County, 11% in King County and 9% in Yakima County, compared to 18% in the Tri-Cities area.

People may be infectious without showing symptoms of COVID-19, warns the Centers for Disease Control.

The risk increases at gatherings that are indoors, especially without good ventilation, and if preventive measures are not being followed, such as wearing masks, social distancing and frequent hand washing, says the CDC.

To check other areas across the United States, the COVID case risk level estimator is at covid19risk.biosci.gatech.edu. It was created in cooperation with Stanford University and the Applied Bioinformatics Laboratory.

This story was originally published November 12, 2020 at 12:13 PM.