A new tool from the genetic testing company 23andMe may be able to predict a person’s risk of contracting a serious case of coronavirus.
First reported by Bloomberg, the COVID-19 Severity Calculator was launched on Wednesday.
The tool asks users to enter their age, sex, ethnicity, weight, height, how often they exercise and whether has any pre-existing conditions.
From there, the calculator reports the likelihood that people with these characteristics have been hospitalized with the virus.
Click the link here to find out how likely you are to be hospitalized with the virus.
The COVID-19 Gravity Calculator was developed by genetic testing company 23andMe and launched on Wednesday
Users are asked to enter their age, sex, ethnicity, weight, height, how often they exercise and whether they have any pre-existing conditions
Based on data from 10,000 COVID-19 patients, the tool reveals the likelihood that someone will be hospitalized with the virus
For example, if you are Hispanic in your 60s, you are 1.75m and weigh 150 pounds with fatty liver disease, your risk of hospitalization is about 22%
The data the calculator uses comes from a COVID-19 study that 23andMe conducted with one million participants that began in April.
Of that total, 10,000 tested positive for the disease and approximately 750 of them were hospitalized.
The researchers then created an algorithm based on the data to determine the likelihood of hospitalization for different groups of people.
The calculator does not analyze the genetic factors transmitted by the parents, such as genetic mutations that lead to diseases such as sickle cell anemia or Down syndrome.
“We quickly publish the results and look for ways to help people benefit more directly from research,” Anne Wojcicki, co-founder and CEO of 23andMe, told Bloomberg.
“We found that providing actionable information to people – like this tool – leads to significant results.”
These data were also the basis for a 23andMe study published in June, which found that people with type O blood were up to 18% less likely to test positive for COVID-19
For example, if you are a white woman in your 20s, weigh about 160 pounds and are 5’7 “with high blood pressure, you have a one to five percent risk of being hospitalized with COVID-19.
But if you are an African American man in your 40s, who weighs 210 pounds, is 1.75m and has type 2 diabetes, your risk is about 13%.
In addition, if you are Hispanic in your 60s, are six feet tall and weigh 150 pounds with fatty liver disease, your risk of hospitalization is about 22%.
After years of growing revenue, people stopped buying DNA test kits, prompting 23andMe to lay off 100 employees, or about 14% of its workforce, in January 2020, CNBC reported.
Wojcicki told Bloomberg that the company hopes to become more valuable by bringing useful health information to its customers. ‘
“More than 75 percent of our customers told us that they took positive health action based on their results from 23andMe,” she told the news agency.
This calculator is not the only job the company has done analyzing the COVID-19 risk.
In June 2020, the company published preliminary data suggesting that having a particular blood type can help protect people from the coronavirus.
The results showed that those with type O blood were up to 18% less likely to test positive for COVID-19.
In addition, oeioke who had the blood type and was exposed was up to 26% less likely to get the disease.
The researchers identified a variant in the ABO gene, responsible for different blood types, that was associated with a lower risk.
“The study and recruitment are ongoing, with the hope that we can use our research platform to better understand the differences in how people respond to the virus,” said a statement on the 23andMe blog.
“Ultimately, we hope to publish our research results in order to provide more information about COVID-19 to the scientific community.”