How dangerous is it to be in a crowd in Washington? Map helps you calculate the risk

Worried about catching the coronavirus at a wedding reception or an NFL game?

You might want to check out this new tool that estimates the risk of being exposed to COVID-19 at gatherings in Washington and other states.

The Georgia Institute of Technology and Applied Bioinformatics Laboratory created the tool using data from the COVID Tracking Project and the U.S. Census Bureau.

The map evaluates the risk by adjusting the number of people at an event and the chance of having at least one COVID-19 positive person in attendance, based on the number of cases circulating.

You can also break down the risk at the county level.

The tool uses the “current incidence,” or the number of cases circulating in a state, as a base number and then multiplies it by five and 10 to predict the chances of being exposed at a gathering.

At a dinner party of 10 in Washington, the chance that someone there is infected with COVID-19 is .91%, based on Tuesday’s coronavirus data in the state. If the dinner party included 50 people, your chance of being exposed to an infected person would be 4.48%, the tool estimates.

If you attended a wedding reception, which the tool estimates to be around 100 people, you would have an 8.74% chance of encountering a person with COVID-19..

At an NFL game with a crowd of 100,000, there’s a 99 percent chance that one or more people in attendance would be infected with the virus, according to Tuesday’s data.

The majority of Washington counties have less than a 75% chance of exposure in an event size of 100 people, Tuesday’s data shows. In the state, 10 counties have a 75% to 99% chance of exposure and Yakima, Franklin and Adams Counties have a 99% or greater chance.

The highest risk for getting infected with coronavirus comes with large gatherings “where it is difficult for individuals to remain spaced at least 6 feet apart and attendees travel from outside the local area,” according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Washington has reported 43,623 coronavirus cases as of July 14 and 1,439 deaths, according to the New York Times.

This story was originally published July 14, 2020 at 1:08 PM with the headline "How dangerous is it to be in a crowd in Washington? Map helps you calculate the risk."