One of the things that we're doing on Grounds to minimize the spread of
COVID-19 is pooled wastewater testing. Testing
individual residence halls. Sort of testing everybody in the
building at once. One of the biggest challenges that we
faced with COVID-19 is that people can spread the virus
without having any symptoms and wastewater surveillance is a great
tool to detect some of those asymptomatic
spreaders. We can detect SARS-CoV because it's shed
in stool at pretty high rates especially early in
infection. By capturing wastewater we can do a pooled
sample of everybody that lives in the building
that use the toilet that day and detect if there are new cases even
before they have symptoms. This can provide an early warning system
we can then take further steps to test individuals
once we detect that there might be new cases
and ultimately limit the spread in the residence halls.
So the wastewater surveillance gives us another tool
to find cases early and minimize the chance of further spread.