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Want to know if a wave of COVID-19 is coming to your city? Check the poop.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Friday it is expanding its efforts to sample wastewater for the virus and is releasing data from the national surveillance network to the online COVID-19 tracker for the first time.
“This allows you to directly compare data across states,” said Amy Kirby, program leader for the CDC’s National Wastewater Surveillance System.
The CDC says infected people can shed the coronavirus in their faeces, even if they are not showing symptoms. Viral RNA can be detected in wastewater when sampled from a treatment plant.
Scanning the sewer system allows public health officials to get an idea of whether the virus is rising or waning in a given area and can send limited resources where they are needed. It is also a way for individuals to monitor the virus without having to get tested or go to the doctor when they are sick.
Ms Kirby said 400 sites in the US have reported wastewater samples to the CDC as part of their coronavirus monitoring efforts. The agency expects 250 more sites to join in the next few weeks and is working with authorities in 37 states to bring additional sites online in the coming months.
“We won’t be looking at every state, but we will look at most states, territories and tribal communities,” Ms Kirby said.
Academic researchers and local organizations began testing wastewater for the virus in a kind of grassroots effort early in the pandemic. Universities regularly distributed it to try and detect outbreaks in dormitories.
The CDC launched the national surveillance system in September 2020. Officials said they have now collected enough data to make an online tracker useful to the public.
Efforts to increase the network’s footprint come at a critical juncture in the pandemic. States are trying to leave the emergency phase behind and treat the virus as a manageable disease, while also hoping they are agile enough to respond to seasonal fluctuations.
Wastewater surveillance will “detect escalating cases as soon as possible so we can have extra days for communities to prepare hospital systems for pending cases,” Kirby said.
It will also help communities know what’s going on as people take the test at home. These results are not reported to health authorities as often as those obtained from laboratories.
Ms Kirby said the surveillance network would be useful beyond COVID-19. The CDC hopes to use it to monitor foodborne illnesses like norovirus or flu by the end of this year.
What appears to be an experiment in stool has a long history. Wastewater surveillance has been used for decades to monitor and eradicate polio, especially overseas.
Ms Kirby said surveillance is designed to complement, not replace, efforts to monitor the virus through clinical testing.
There are limits to using wastewater to monitor viral trends. Parts of the country are heavily dependent on septic tanks rather than an interconnected sewer system, and wastewater surveillance is not as useful where there are large numbers of tourists or otherwise temporary populations, as samples need to reflect those who may be contagious. when mingling with a particular community.
Federal disease trackers say there is no evidence that anyone exposed to the virus through untreated wastewater has gotten sick.
For more information, visit The Washington Times COVID-19 resource page.
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