AUSTIN (KXAN) – A new online tool from the University of Texas at Austin shows the potential number of new coronavirus cases in schools across the country, according to a release from UT-Austin.
The tool, updated daily, was created by UT’s COVID-19 Modeling Consortium to let families see both the potential number of new cases and the risk of interacting with someone infected with COVID-19 at school, the release says. Your search can be targeted toward any day of the week and in any county in the U.S.
“It’s meant to guide families, teachers and school leadership in understanding the risks of bringing students into classrooms and onto campuses,” said Lauren Ancel Meyers, the director of the consortium and a UT professor, in the press release. “These risks are changing through time as the prevalence of the virus rises and falls in cities around the US”
The interactive data can be further narrowed by showing different group sizes from 10 people to 5,000 people. The tool indicates that settings with more people such as schools and classrooms will see a higher risk of new cases as well as interacting with infected people.
“Based on recent trends, opening schools may be risky in regions where COVID-19 is spreading widely,” consortium associate director Spencer Fox said in the press release. “In a school with 500 students, we would expect at least 20 to show up infected in El Paso County compared to fewer than five in Austin’s Travis County.”
In all group sizes, the Texas counties with both the highest potential number of new cases and the highest risk of infected people going to school are Jones, Gray and Ochiltree.
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