SPOKANE, Wash — Thinking about attending a Thanksgiving dinner this year? In parts of the Inland Northwest, that could be almost like flipping a coin to see if you get the coronavirus, according to a tool built by Georgia Tech.
The university compiles data from the COVID Tracking Project and the New York Times COVID-19 data project to generate risk estimates for every county in the United States. You can use their tool – the Georgia Tech COVID-19 Event Risk Assessment Planning Tool – to get an idea of how likely you might be to catch to coronavirus if you attended an event of different sizes in any county in the country.
For example, in Spokane County, the tool calculates that at a 100-person event, there is a 89% chance that someone in attendance will be COVID-19 positive. At a gathering with only 10 people, that risk drops to 21%.
On Friday, KREM 2 checked the risks in counties in Eastern Washington, North Idaho and part of Montana for three different sized events: 10-person, 50-person and 100-person.
The odds were calculated based on current case data in each county, rather total numbers over the course of the year, in order to focus on the chances of you running into someone who is currently contagious. The team also factored in how those numbers are likely low due to limited testing and under-reporting.
Interestingly, the Inland Northwest is currently much riskier to gather in than the more densely-populated Puget Sound region. That suggests the percentage of currently sick people is higher in more inland counties.
10-person event
- Spokane County, WA: 20%
- Grant County, WA: 22%
- Whitman County, WA: 18%
- Stevens County, WA: 11%
- Bonner County, ID: 18%
- Kootenai County, ID: 28%
- Latah County, ID: 34%
- Lincoln County, MT: 38%
50-person event
- Spokane County, WA: 66%
- Grant County, WA: 72%
- Whitman County, WA: 62%
- Stevens County, WA: 44%
- Bonner County, ID: 62%
- Kootenai County, ID: 81%
- Latah County, ID: 88%
- Lincoln County, MT: 91%
100-person event
- Spokane County, WA: 89%
- Grant County, WA: 92 %
- Whitman County, WA: 86%
- Stevens County, WA: 69%
- Bonner County, ID: 86%
- Kootenai County, ID: 96%
- Latah County, ID: 98%
- Lincoln County, MT: 99%
