Health & Fitness

Coronavirus Spread In Cherokee County: See Your Risk Of Exposure

A new tool assesses the risk of gathering with others in Cherokee County or elsewhere.

CHEROKEE COUNTY, GA — After several months of decline, Georgia's coronavirus numbers have begun to creep back up, causing Gov. Brian Kemp to again renew Georgia's COVID-19 guidelines through at least Nov. 30.

Per current statewide guidelines, gatherings limited to 50 or fewer people, with Georgia residents still "encouraged" but not required to wear masks.

What is your risk of exposure?

Find out what's happening in Woodstock-Towne Lakefor free with the latest updates from Patch.

Researchers from several universities have 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.

Find out what's happening in Woodstock-Towne Lakefor free with the latest updates from Patch.

As of Tuesday, if you were to attend an event with 15 people in Cherokee County, there would be a 21 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 14 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.

Amber Fisher, Patch Staff, contributed to this report.

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