NewsCovering Louisiana

Actions

Georgia Tech offers local-level risk assessment tool

Posted
and last updated

Georgia Tech has created an interactive dashboard that helps you estimate the risk of attending an event depending on the parish you live in.

For instance, if you plan to go to a gathering of 10 people in Lafayette Parish, you run a 56 percent change of attending that event with someone who is COVID-19 positive. If the event is 25 people, that chance bumps up to 87 percent.

According to a release from the University, the “Covid-19 Event Risk Assessment Planning Tool” is the work of Joshua Weitz, professor in the School of Biological Sciences and founding director of Georgia Tech’s Ph.D. in Quantitative Biosciences program, in collaboration with the lab of Clio Andris, an assistant professor in the School of City and Regional Planning with a joint appointment in the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Tech, and with researchers from the Applied Bioinformatics Laboratory (a public/private partnership between Georgia Tech, IHRC Inc., and ASRT Inc.).

“We have developed an interactive county-level map of the risk that one or more individuals may have Covid-19 in events of different sizes,” Weitz says. “The issue of understanding risks associated with gatherings is even more relevant as many kinds of businesses, including sports and universities, are considering how to re-open safely.”

The dashboard accounts for widespread gaps in U.S. testing for the Coronavirus, which can silently spread through individuals who display mild or no symptoms of illness.

“Precisely because of under-testing and the risk of exposure and infection, these risk calculations provide further support for the ongoing need for social distancing and protective measures. Such precautions are still needed even in small events, given the large number of circulating cases,” states the dashboard’s website.

You can see the dashboard here.