Virus risk map can help with travel plans

PHOENIX – It won’t be easy for Americans to decide whom to welcome into their homes or visit during the holiday season as the U.S. breaks records for new cases of COVID-19.

A number of cities and states have tried to limit residents’ activities in an effort to slow the spread of COVID-19. That includes Chicago, where Mayor Lori Lightfoot issued a 30-day stay-athome advisory.

Other cities have imposed curfews. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention maintains that the best way to protect yourself and others from COVID-19 is to stay home.

Travelers should check for restrictions in the state, city, tribe or territory they are visiting.

The CDC has resources and links on its website to help find applicable health departments.

For those who are considering traveling to see friends and family as 2020 comes to a close, an interactive map can help inform your decision whether you feel safe going to an event or gathering in any given location, reports The Arizona Republic.

Researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology, the Applied Bioinformatics Laboratory and Stanford University have created the COVID-19 Risk Assessment Planning Tool, which “shows the risk level of attending an event, given the event size and location.”

The tool, which is updated daily, can be found at https://covid19risk. biosci.gatech.edu.

“To provide real-time, geolocalized risk information, we developed an interactive online dashboard that estimates the risk that at least one individual with SARS-COV-2 is present in gatherings of different sizes in the United States,” the researchers wrote in a peer-reviewed Nature Human Behaviour article.

With the “USA Risk Estimates by County” map, a user can use a slider to select the size of the gathering, ranging from 10 to 5,000 people, and the level of bias they want to apply to the results.

If you navigate to the “Real-time U.S. and State-level Estimates,” the tool shows a chart with the risk level of various gathering sizes, taking into account the ascertainment biases.

COVID-19 EVENT RISK ASSESSMENT PLANNING TOOL Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology, the Applied Bioinformatics Laboratory and Stanford University have created the COVID-19 Event Risk Assessment Planning Tool, which “shows the risk level of attending an event, given the event size and location.”