See Your Coronavirus Indoor Exposure Risk In Pittsburgh Area

PITTSBURGH, PA — As the holiday season kicks off and officials warn residents about limiting their interactions with others outside of their own household to curb the spread of the coronavirus, a tool developed by researchers from several universities lets you see your risk of exposure to the virus at an indoor gathering.

The 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 Wednesday, if you were to attend an event with at least 15 people in Allegheny County, there’s a 25 percent chance that someone in the group could expose you to the virus, according to the COVID-19 Risk Assessment Planning Tool. If your gathering has 10 people, that risk would be 17 percent.

Here's the exposure risk for other southwestern Pennsylvania counties as of Wednesday:

• Westmoreland: 15 people, 32 percent; 10 people, 23 percent.
• Washington: 15 people, 29 percent; 10 people 21 percent.
• Butler: 15 people, 25 percent; 10 people, 22 percent.
• Beaver: 15 people, 25 percent; 10 people, 17 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."

The current maximum occupancy limits for indoor public gatherings in Pennsylvania. is 500 people. In all southwestern Pennsylvania counties, anyone attending an indoor public event with 500 people would have a 99 percent chance of being exposed to the virus.

>> Access the COVID-19 Event Risk Assessment Planning Tool here.

Amber Fisher contributed to this report.