The Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, caused by the virus severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), has impacted over 200 countries leading to hospitalizations and deaths of millions of people. Public health interventions, such as risk estimators, can reduce the spread of pandemics and epidemics through influencing behavior, which impacts risk of exposure and infection. Current publicly available COVID-19 risk estimation tools have had variable effectiveness during the pandemic due to their dependency on rapidly evolving factors such as community transmission levels and variants. There has also been confusion surrounding certain personal protective strategies such as risk reduction by mask-wearing and vaccination. In order to create a simple easy-to-use tool for estimating different individual risks associated with carrying out daily-life activity, we developed COVID-19 Activity Risk Calculator (CovARC). CovARC is a gamified public health intervention as users can "play with" how different risks associated with COVID-19 can change depending on several different factors when carrying out routine daily activities. Empowering the public to make informed, data-driven decisions about safely engaging in activities may help to reduce COVID-19 levels in the community. In this study, we demonstrate a streamlined, scalable and accurate COVID-19 risk calculation system. Our study also demonstrates the quantitative impact of vaccination and mask-wearing during periods of high case counts. Validation of this impact could inform and support policy decisions regarding case thresholds for mask mandates, and other public health interventions.

翻译：由严重急性呼吸综合征冠状病毒2型（SARS-CoV-2）引起的2019冠状病毒病（COVID-19）大流行已影响超过200个国家，导致数百万人住院和死亡。风险估算器等公共卫生干预措施可通过影响行为来降低大流行和流行病的传播，从而影响暴露和感染风险。当前公开可用的COVID-19风险评估工具在大流行期间有效性不一，因其依赖于社区传播水平和变异株等快速变化因素。此外，围绕口罩佩戴和疫苗接种等个人防护策略的降风险效果也存有混淆。为创建一种简单易用的工具以评估日常活动相关的不同个体风险，我们开发了COVID-19活动风险计算器（CovARC）。CovARC是一种游戏化公共卫生干预工具，用户可"模拟"在日常活动中不同因素如何改变COVID-19相关风险。赋予公众基于数据的知情决策能力，以安全参与活动，可能有助于降低社区COVID-19水平。本研究展示了一套简化、可扩展且精确的COVID-19风险计算系统。研究还量化了高病例数时期疫苗接种和口罩佩戴的定量影响。验证该影响可为口罩强制令的病例阈值及其他公共卫生干预措施的政策决策提供依据和支持。