Notes: We project the expected number of students or staff who will arrive infected in a given week based on recent estimates for COVID-19 prevalence in each US county and the size of a school or pod. We estimate disease prevalence by first obtaining county-level reported case counts from the New York Times (https://github.com/nytimes/covid-19-data) and then correcting for underreporting. We assume a median reporting rate of 20% and lower and upper bounds of 10% and 33%, respectively. This risk model was originally published in the New York Times on July 31, 2020 (https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/07/31/us/coronavirus-school-reopening-risk.html) and described in this report (https://sites.cns.utexas.edu/sites/default/files/cid/files/school_introduction_risks.pdf).The Georgia Institute of Technology hosts a complementary event planning tool (https://covid19risk.biosci.gatech.edu/) that provides COVID-19 risk assessments for a wider variety of gatherings, as described in Nature Human Behavior (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-020-01000-9).

Our risk estimates are based on county-level data provided by the New York Times (NYT), which are prone to occasional reporting errors. Please check our log for known issues and alert us at utpandemics@austin.utexas.edu with additional concerns.

For questions, please contact utpandemics@austin.utexas.edu