Residents learned Covid-19 cases might be ticking upward in parts of Davis, Calif., this month thanks to an increasingly popular data stream: wastewater surveillance.
More health officials are turning to the sewers to monitor coronavirus transmission and spot early signs of outbreaks as Covid-19 cases and hospitalizations. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is allocating some $33 million to 31 public-health laboratories to start wastewater testing in the coming months.
In Davis, health officials and researchers found multiple Covid-19-positive wastewater samples in parts of the city of roughly 68,000. Separate patient samples suggestedwas in their midst. Local officials sent out an alert and hung more than 3,000 blue signs on doorknobs in three neighborhoods, encouraging people to get tested for the virus.
“Wastewater monitoring becomes a lot more useful both as testing rates go down and vaccination rates differ in different places,” said Heather Bischel, an assistant professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of California, Davis and lead of the city’s sewage-testing project.
As the U.S. has dropped most pandemic restrictions, people might not get tested for Covid-19 if they feel the threat has passed, some public health experts said. Wastewater testing can provide a snapshot of the relative level of virus in a community and the direction in which it is trending, regardless of whether people seek Covid-19 tests, adding a layer of information for health authorities.
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