A few days after he left the country to start a college lodge, Ryan Schmutz received a text message from Utah State University: Covid-1 was found in his dorm.
Within 10 minutes, he put down the craps he had made and was moved to the test site by buses.
“We didn’t know they were testing,” said Smutz, 18, of Omaha, Nebraska. “It all happened really fast.”
Schmutz was one of about 300 students quarantined in his room last week, but not because of illness reports or positive tests. Instead, warning bells came from the gutter.
From New Mexico to Tennessee, Michigan to New York, colleges across the country are turning waste testing into a public health tool. This work comes at a time when institutions are looking for ways to keep campuses open despite weaknesses such as the proximity of students and the vehicle of socialization. The virus has already broken out which has forced a change in remote learning in colleges across the country.
The tests work Studies suggest that genetic material may be found in the stools of about half of people with COVD-19. The concept has also been used to describe the outbreak of the polio virus.
Experts say gutter testing is especially valuable because it can evaluate people even if they don’t feel sick and can detect some cases out of thousands of people, experts say. At the University of Arizona, for example, a flag quarantine of about 300 students with dirty water, for example, came up against two cases. Both were asymptomatic students, but they could still have spread the virus.
“When we think about establishing a college dorm, and how quickly the disease can spread to that population, it’s very valuable information,” said Peter Gravat, CEO of the Water Research Foundation, which promotes the study of water and wastewater for water conservation. Quality and service.
The possible presence of the virus in a University of Colorado residence hall was also flagged by sewage tests.
Utah has made more extensive use of this method, including tracking outbreaks of meatpacking plants. The British, Italian and Dutch governments have also announced similar surveillance programs, and the Massachusetts-based company Bioboat investigates wastewater from cities around the country.
However, the method remains inaccurate. It can detect the tendency to infection, but cannot yet pinpoint how many people have the virus or the stage of infection. This means that it is not yet very useful on a large scale in cities that do not always have the scientific resources of a university or that people do not need to be tested.
Although the technique is being studied closely, it is evolving rapidly, Gravet said, adding that it is best to use it with other methods such as contact tracing.
It is not a cure for colleges. The state of Utah, for example, can only monitor sewers from a relatively small fraction of the students who live on campus – not the thousands of people who come and go every day. The university has an enrollment of about 28,000.
And this week, the Utah State Positive Sewage Test could only be narrowed down to four residential halls with the same residence as the same sewer system. At the end of 29 Aug Gust the test returned positive, and quarantine began the next day. Students were required to stay in their room, take a meal provided by the “COVID care” team and be prohibited from walking a few steps outside the residence.
The buildings were housed in an apartment apartment-style suite, and students were released from quarantine in small groups if each roommate in the suite tested negative. As of Thursday, four coronavirus cases had been reported in the tests.
Schmutz, who tested negative with his roommates, did not lose much of his individual class time during the four-day quarantine.
But he is a little dissatisfied that he and his family have not been told about the sewer test. “It felt like we were out of the loop on everything. It is definitely difficult to process, ”he said.
The state of Utah has heard similar frustrations from parents and students, though many are grateful, spokeswoman Emily Wheeler said. “They see it as a nonviolent initial investigation system,” he said.
The program is also relatively inexpensive. The school takes samples every day to monitor how many living areas, and tests are run by a team of students.
“Wastewater is a story to tell about the public health status of communities,” Gravett said. “A lot of people work at the moment. It’s just noticeable to see how fast it has progressed. “
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The story has been modified to reflect that the quarantine concerning the dirty water flag of about 300 students took place not at Arizona State University but at the University of Arizona.
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