Celebrating New Year’s Eve in South Florida? Map shows COVID risks in your county
The coronavirus continues to surge across South Florida in numbers unseen since summer, with COVID-19 test positivity rates soaring higher than ever recorded since the state started reporting the metric in April.
With New Year’s Eve around the corner, it’s important to assess how risky it is to gather with others, especially if celebrations involve visitors traveling from other states.
An interactive map developed by researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology shows how risky gatherings of different sizes are in each Florida county, based on at least one attendee being infected with the coronavirus.
Users can select an “event size” anywhere from 10 to 5,000 people and watch as the map changes color based on risk level. Light yellow areas have risk levels below 1%, while dark red regions have risk levels above 99%.
Hovering over individual counties will reveal your chances of contracting COVID-19.
The map combines documented coronavirus cases at the county level and data from antibody test results, which reveal more infections than reported by the state’s health department.
For that reason, the researchers assume there are five times more cases than are being reported, but they note that “in places with less testing availability, that bias may be higher.”
New Year’s Eve events with 20 people introduces a 56% chance that at least one person is infected with coronavirus in Miami-Dade County, a 38% chance in Broward County and a 32% chance in Palm Beach County. If 50 people attend a party, those risks jump to 87%, 70% and 61%, respectively.
Osceola County and Hendry County also have COVID-19 risk levels of 80% for a 50-person gathering, while Panhandle counties such as Madison County, Calhoun County and Bay County have high risks as well.
The southern-most county with the lowest risk during a New Year’s Eve celebration of 50 people is Glades County, which offers a 43% risk that at least one person is infected with coronavirus.
Generally, the more people you add to a party, the greater the chances of getting sick because large gatherings that take place indoors are cesspools for viral spread and have been linked to large outbreaks of the coronavirus, experts say.
Taking celebrations outdoors, asking guests to wear masks and keeping at least a 6-foot distance between attendees is the safest way to ring in the new year during the pandemic.
The number of Floridians who tested positive for COVID-19 jumped Tuesday to nearly 23% of those testing positive for the first time, “the highest rate since the state started reporting the metric in April,” the Miami Herald reported.
Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties also reported “unprecedented” highs in coronavirus positivity rates on Tuesday, with rates of 23.97%, 24.03% and 19.50%, respectively, according to the Herald.
The state added 13,871 COVID-19 cases on Wednesday — the most reported since July — and 137 new resident deaths.
