Pediatric COVID Risk Calculator
We have developed an online tool to help determine the risk of asymptomatic infection with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. The tool is based on work done at UCSF headed by Dr. Dylan Chan, of the Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery and Ana Marija Sola of the UCSF School of Medicine, in collaboration with pediatric otolaryngologists across the United States.
This interactive calculator allows the user to estimate, for any county in the United States, the likelihood that a child without symptoms of COVID-19 will have an asymptomatic infection with SARS-CoV-2. It can also estimate the risk that within a group of children of user-specified size, that at least 1 child will be infected. This can be valuable, for example, to use to estimate the risk associated with classrooms of different sizes.
In the example below, the estimated rate of asymptomatic children infected with SARS-CoV-2 in San Francisco County from early July is shown.
It is important to note that these estimates relate to children with asymptomatic infections with SARS-CoV-2, detected by standard RT-PCR test. The infectivity of these children is not well established; therefore, the true risk of transmission due to these cases is not known
This tool may be of interest to parents, teachers, childcare providers, physicians, and any community members who interact with groups of children.
Media and Links
- JAMA Pediatrics article on which this online calculator is based.
- Data are drawn from the public confirmed-cases database from Johns Hopkins University.