A general view of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Edward R. Roybal campus in Atlanta, Georgia on April 23, 2020.
Tami Chappell | AFP | Getty Images
The federal government is working with local health departments to begin testing coronavirus sewage systems in an effort to catch the virus before it spreads rapidly, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.
The CDC, in partnership with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and other federal government agencies, will begin working with state, local, territorial and tribal health departments to collect data on the sewer samples, an effort they put into the National Wastewater Surveillance System call, as NWSS, according to CDC guidance updated on Monday.
The goal: to find traces of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes Covid-19, which infects humans and travels through the sewage system.
While wastewater testing is not intended to replace clinical trials, it may help communities where Covid-19 testing is “underutilized or unavailable,” the CDC says. Wastewater testing could potentially have an enormous reach – 80% of U.S. households are connected to a municipal sewer system.
Depending on the level of virus in the sewer, wastewater testing can also be a leading indicator of a worsening outbreak. People with Covid-19 who show symptoms and those who are unable to detect traces of the virus can allow scientists to collect data on both types of infection, the CDC says.
Sewage testing has been used to detect other diseases, such as polio, and to determine the prevalence of opioid use in some American communities. Some public health experts, including Drs. Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, has suggested using sewage tests for Covid-19, saying it is a cost-effective strategy to track the coronavirus and predict outbreaks.
The CDC does not currently take samples for testing, but is looking for local partners to test and report the data to the agency’s NWSS portal.
Some countries have already started testing wastewater for the coronavirus, including Finland, Germany, and the Netherlands, and U.S. water authorities said they would conduct the tests, STAT News reported in late May.
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