Reopening businesses and risk of COVID-19 transmission

The research quantified the potential risk of COVID-19 transmission in business establishments by building a risk index for each business that measures transmission risk over time. We used anonymized cell-phone data to build a Business Risk Index and analyzed trends in foot traffic to more than 1.25 million businesses across eight states during the pandemic. As at March 2021, our Business Risk Index has been integrated as a feature in a machine learning-driven forecasting model for COVID-19 hospitalizations for a large health system in Massachusetts.