Here’s your risk of being exposed to COVID in Tri-Cities at Thanksgiving dinner or shopping

Odds are less than 10% that someone at your Thanksgiving table in the Tri-Cities will have COVID-19 if you keep the gathering relatively small, according to a COVID risk estimate by the Georgia Institute of Technology.

If you are eating with a group of 10 in Benton County there is a 6% chance one person is infected, increasing to 7% in Franklin County.

If you have a larger gathering of 20 people, chances increase to 12% in Benton County and 13% in Franklin County.

The risk is slightly higher in Walla Walla County, with a 10% chance a group of 10 will include someone with COVID-19. In Yakima County the estimated risk is 7%.

That compares to a risk of just 5% in Seattle among a group of 10.

The highest risk in Washington state is in Chelan County, home to Wenatchee and Leavenworth, at 25% for a group of 10.

Only a few rural areas in the Northwest have a risk of 50% or more, such as Nome, Alaska, or remote Niobrara County, Wyo.

The Georgia Tech risk estimates assume that there are four times more active cases than confirmed and reported to public health officials through testing.

And the estimates do not take into account that people with symptoms may responsibly opt to stay home.

Grocery shopping, eating out

The grocery shopping trip for all the ingredients to prepare dinner, also carries some risk.

The Georgia Tech risk assessment evaluated the risk by county that a group of 50 would have someone with COVID-19. It used that number as the level either for a supermarket or eating in a restaurant.

In Benton County, the risk rises to 27% and in Franklin County 30% in those places.

If you plan to eat your Thanksgiving meal at a Spokane restaurant the risk rises to 50%, according to the risk calculator.

Planning to see a movie in a Tri-Cities theater after your Thanksgiving dinner?

The risk that someone among 100 people in the movie theater has COVID-19 is 46% in Benton County and 51% in Franklin County.

Test before you gather

You can increase the odds that no one at your Thanksgiving gathering has COVID-19 if those coming to dinner test in advance.

The Benton Franklin Health District is working with the National Institutes of Health to deliver free COVID-19 test kits to households in the two counties. They give results in two minutes.

Kits can be ordered at SayYesCovidHomeTest.org.

Each household is limited to one order, but will receive enough supplies for eight tests per order.

The number of new confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the Tri-Cities area has been dropping over the past eight weeks, along with reported deaths due to the disease.

But one of the best ways to avoid serious illness continues to be vaccination, according to public health officials.

People who are vaccinated are less likely to be infected with COVID-19 than people who are not vaccinated and also less likely to be infected than people who have had the disease, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

One study showed that unvaccinated individuals are twice as likely to have a second COVID-19 infection as those who are fully vaccinated, the CDC said.

Vaccinated people who are infected with COVID-19 are less likely to be hospitalized or die from the disease, according to the Benton Franklin Health District.

This story was originally published November 22, 2021 at 12:12 PM.