Because infected people begin excreting virus days before developing symptoms, wastewater monitoring can provide an early warning of infection in the community.
Since September 2020, University of California, Davis, researchers have been monitoring wastewater on the UC Davis campus and in the city of Davis for COVID-19 through the Healthy Davis Together program. A new article published Feb. 8 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reviews their experiences and the advantages and limitations of wastewater testing as a public health tool in the COVID-19 pandemic.
Assistant Professor Heather Bischel and doctoral student Hannah Safford, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and Karen Shapiro, associate professor in the School of Veterinary Medicine, manage the city/campus wastewater monitoring program, which now includes collections weekly, triweekly or daily from over 50 sites distributed across the UC Davis campus and city of Davis sewer networks. Their results have supported the return of students to campus and helped officials understand the spread of COVID-19 in the community.
“Continued deployment of wastewater-based epidemiology in ways that take into account the needs of decision makers, and pragmatically weigh costs and benefits, will no doubt do much to help end the pandemic,” they wrote.
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Image via University of California Davis
