COVID-19 cases are emerging in the United States. On Tuesday, Anthony Fauci, MD, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, warned lawmakers that cases could increase to 100,000 per day across the country.. One of the most important ways to protect yourself from contracting the virus is to know how widespread cases have become in your own ZIP code, which is why the free Harvard tool records COVID-19 cases by state (and even county) .
The Harvard COVID Risk Levels Panel launched on June 30 and allows you to connect your zip code or combination of county and state to assess whether your local risk of COVID-19 is green, yellow, orange, or (worst of all) red. Harvard calculates what tone should be assigned to its district by the number of new daily COVID-19 cases per 1,000 people.
If your state is red (such as Arizona and Florida), there are 25 or more cases per 100,000. For orange, there are 10 to 24. “When you go into that orange and red zone, in all likelihood, you’re seeing a lot of speeds, a kind of rapid upward trend,” Danielle Allen, PhD, a professor at Harvard told WBUR. . For yellow, there are between one and nine. And finally, states that are green (like Hawaii) have no more than one new case per day. Where I am currently in Dane County, Wisconsin, for example, we are in the yellow zone.
“[We] collectively we need to stay focused on what our primary goal should be: a path to near-zero case incidence. “—Danielle Allen, PhD
The need for such a tool could not be more clear. “The public needs clear and consistent information about COVID risk levels in different jurisdictions for personal decision-making, and policy makers need clear and consistent visibility to differentiate policies across jurisdictions,” said Dr. Allen in a statement. “We also need to collectively focus on what our primary goal should be: a path to near zero case incidence.”
In addition to allowing you to check how risky you are when you say, going to the grocery store or deciding whether dining indoors or going back to the gym is the right choice for you, the tool will also help you think through what risks you’re willing to take. to travel. Will visiting your parents make you more likely to bring COVID-10 to your own city? Really worth it? These are some of the questions that the new Harvard tool can help you answer.
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“Uncertainty is the currency of pandemics,” read a Harvard press release. Take it as a small victory that you don’t have to feel unsure about how many active cases of COVID-19 are in your neighborhood.
