New model estimates COVID-19 transmission in classrooms, buses, protests, more.
Many of us face a constant barrage of decisions during this global pandemic: How dangerous is it to ride the bus? To teach and/or attend class? What’s my risk in a public demonstration?
University of Colorado Boulder atmospheric chemist Jose-Luis Jimenez has released a pilot tool that may help us answer some of these questions, or at least provide some informed guidance.
The COVID Airborne Transmission Estimator is now publicly available online, said Jimenez, who is a CIRES Fellow and professor of chemistry at CU Boulder. It will be updated as more and more is understood about COVID-19 airborne transmission, and the tool is still somewhat tricky for a non-expert to use. But since Jimenez released the estimator Tuesday, he has been “bombarded with messages from people who want to use it or are already using it,” including people from other universities around the world.
The Estimator calculates COVID-19 infection risk for a number of basic situations: college classrooms, choirs, taking a bus, being outdoors, participating in demonstrations. The model is downloadable and free, and users can tweak inputs to ask, for example, what’s my risk if other students wear or don’t wear masks? And can my choir sing together more safely by moving outdoors?
Continue reading at Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences
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