CDC to ramp up wastewater surveillance

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: NBC News

Follow the sewage. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday that it will expand efforts to collect wastewater samples from communities across the country to search for traces of the coronavirus. The agency said monitoring for viral particles in sewage provides an important, on-the-ground snapshot of how the virus is spreading.

Known as wastewater surveillance, this type of research has emerged as a key way to assess the health of communities beyond traditional Covid-19 testing, particularly in neighborhoods with unequal or limited access to health care, such as minority and low-income communities. Amy Kirby, the program lead for the CDC's National Wastewater Surveillance System, said between 40 percent and 80 percent of people with Covid shed bits of the virus in their feces.

This includes people who are asymptomatic, which means wastewater surveillance can detect the virus in stool samples from people who may not have even known they were positive for Covid, she said. As such, studying wastewater can reveal how pervasive the virus is at the local level and can provide a heads-up to public health departments about where new outbreaks may be occurring.

"Because increases in wastewater generally occurred before corresponding increases in clinical cases, wastewater surveillance serves as an early warning system for the emergence of Covid-19 in a community," Kirby said. Knowing which areas have high concentrations of the virus could help public health departments plan for how to deal with surges of infection, including where to open more testing and vaccination sites and how best to direct hospital resources.



Read more: https://www.nbcnews.com/science/science-news/cdc-ramp-wastewater-surveillance-rcna14892

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Heard this on the radio earlier today.

Here is the link to CDC's Wastewater tracker - https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#wastewater-surveillance

(includes those sites that are actually collecting and analyzing it)

[Hugh_Lebowski]

1. Sounds brilliant. Science FTW (nt)

[intrepidity]

2. I wonder if they can do a retrospective study

It would seem trivial to collect and save tiny samples as SOP, which could be later evaluated as technology and knowledge improves. If every wastewater processing facility worldwide could implement such practice, it might go a long way to solving unanswered question around disease origins and spread.

[greenjar_01]

7. They're collecting and sequencing in many major urban areas

And finding very interesting shit, so to speak.

[OneCrazyDiamond]

3. ...to search for traces of the coronavirus.

I bet they find it.

[BigmanPigman]

4. In San Diego they are testing the water at the schools.

[Bayard]

5. I would not want that job

But I seem to remember this was already being done in some areas, and they were finding it.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

6. This system has been in use in Harris County for a while

This is a better way to measure the spread of the virus than testing

[greenjar_01]

8. It provides a better sense of population numbers than testing (no self-selection - everybody poops)

And they can get down to relatively local level spread because they can collect at the sewersheds.