Coronavirus FAQ: Can I get COVID outdoors? (With printable poster on how to cut risks)

Outdoor events are way less risky than indoor events when it comes to COVID. They are still, by far, the safest way to gather as the country continues to see high levels of cases and rising hospitalizations.

But "way less risky" is not "zero risk." There's still a chance of catching COVID even at an outdoor event — especially as the virus continues evolving to become more transmissible and to break through prior immunity from vaccination or earlier cases.

"With the more transmissible variants, it's likely that shorter periods of close contact will result in transmission," says Dr. Preeti Malani, an infectious diseases physician and a professor of medicine at the University of Michigan.

That means activities that once seemed pretty safe are potentially riskier – and that includes outdoor activities.

As , an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School and a computational epidemiologist at Boston Children's Hospital, puts