Coronavirus Spread In Brandon: See Your Risk Of Exposure

BRANDON, FL — Florida is in the middle of a significant surge in coronavirus cases, hospitalizations, and deaths. The Center for Diseases Control and Prevention is recommending to celebrate Thanksgiving this year with people in your household, given the high rate of coronavirus infections.

Florida does not have a limit on gatherings after Gov. Ron DeSantis fully opened the state in Sept.

The CDC said traditional Thanksgiving gatherings with family and friends are fun but can increase the chances of getting or spreading coronavirus or the flu, and recommend for people to be cautious.

What is your risk of exposure?

Researchers created an event risk planning tool for every county in the nation. The map shows the risk of coronavirus transmission based on an event's size and location.

A new tool shows the estimated chance — between 0 and 100 percent — that you'll encounter at least one person with the coronavirus at an event in your county. You can reduce the risk by wearing a mask, distancing and gathering outdoors in smaller groups, researchers said.

As of Tuesday, if you were to attend an event with 15 people in Hillsborough County, there would be a 14 percent chance that someone at the event would have the virus, according to the COVID-19 Event Risk Assessment Planning Tool.

If you hang out with 10 people, the chance drops to 10 percent.

Two Georgia Institute of Technology professors led the creation of the project, and their team included researchers from Stanford University and the Applied Bioinformatics Laboratory.

"By default we assume there are five times more cases than are being reported," the research team said in a statement. "In places with less testing availability, that bias may be higher."
Use the COVID-19 "Event Risk Assessment Planning Tool" here.