  The outbreak of COVID-19 within the last two years has resulted in much
further investigation into the safety of large events that involve a gathering
of people. This study aims to investigate how COVID-19 can spread through a
large crowd of people shopping in a store with no safety precautions taken. The
event being investigated is Black Friday, where hundreds or thousands of
customers flood stores to hopefully receive the best deals on popular items. A
mock store was created, separated into several different shopping sections, and
represented using a 2-D grid where each square on the grid represented a 5 feet
by 5 feet area of the mock store. Customers were simulated to enter the store,
shop for certain items, check out, and then leave the store. A percentage of
customers were chosen to be infective when they entered the store, which means
that they could spread infection quantum to other customers. Four hours of time
was simulated with around 6,000 customers being included. The maximum distance
exposure could be spread (2 feet-10 feet), the minimum time of exposure needed
to become infected (2 - 15 minutes), and the total percentage of customers who
started as infective (1% - 5%) were all changed and their effects on the number
of newly infected customers were measured. It was found that increasing the
maximum exposure distance by 2 feet resulted in between a 20% to 250% increase
in newly infected customers, depending on the distances being used. It was also
found that increasing the percentage of customers who started as infective from
1% to 2% and then to 5% resulted in a 200% to 300% increase in newly infected
customers.
