Going to a New Year’s Eve party in Washington? Tool lets you calculate the COVID risk

Coronavirus cases are surging across the country as family and friends continue to gather during the holiday season.

If you’re wondering if you should attend a party to ring in the new year, there’s a tool to assess the risk of COVID-19 spreading at gatherings in every Washington county.

Georgia Institute of Technology researchers created an interactive tool that allows users to assess the chances that at least one person at an event has COVID-19. Counties in yellow have the lowest risk while those in dark red pose a risk greater than 99%.

“You can reduce the risk that one case becomes many by wearing a mask, distancing, and gathering outdoors in smaller groups,” the Georgia Institute of Technology researchers wrote.

An event with 20 people in Garfield County poses a 68% chance that at least one attendee has the coronavirus, using data as of Wednesday. The risk for an event of the same size in Walla Walla and Yakima counties is 59% and 55%, respectively.

In Pierce County, there is a 24% chance that at least one person is infected with COVID-19 at a gathering of 20 people, and Whatcom County carries a 12% risk. Thurston County’s risk level is 15% for a 20-person event.

The Washington state Department of Health reported 2,201 new cases and 174 deaths on Tuesday, The News Tribune reported. The number of deaths includes around 200 cases that previously went unreported due to a processing issue, DOH said.

There has been an average of 1,927 cases per day over the past week, which is an a 30% decrease from the average in mid-December, The New York Times reported.

However, deaths have increased by 7% in the state compared to the average from two weeks earlier, according to the publication.

Washington has more than 240,000 confirmed coronavirus cases as of Wednesday and at least 3,300 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warn that traveling or celebrating New Year’s Eve with people who don’t live with you increases your chances of catching and spreading COVID-19.

“The safest way to celebrate the new year is to celebrate at home with the people who live with you or virtually with friends and family. Staying home is the best way to protect yourself and others,” the CDC wrote.

Despite public health warnings about the risks of holiday gatherings, Tuesday was the fourth day in a row that saw more than a million people pass through U.S. airport security checkpoints, according to the Transportation Security Administration.

This story was originally published December 30, 2020 at 12:34 PM.