Cities Around the World Are Looking for Clues About Covid-19 In Human Poop
A global effort of sewage sleuths could change the way health officials battle coronavirus
Across the globe, Covid-19 detectives are finding their research united by one thing: poop. Specifically, data that can be extracted from our sewage, which can tell us a lot about how the pandemic is spreading and mutating, and how we might rein it in. Even scientists who aren’t tracking the spread of the virus via poop alone are still using this data in their models.
People mostly spread SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, through the nose and mouth, but the bug also nestles in the intestines and can spread through waste. In the early days of the Covid-19 outbreak, scientists turned to raw sewage to find traces of the virus that have been missed by other detection methods, like logging hospitalizations, contact tracing, or positive tests.
Scientists regularly deploy sewage surveillance to monitor for polioviruses, pathogens with antimicrobial resistance, and even the use of drugs like heroin and MDMA. So it didn’t take much tweaking to start looking for the new coronavirus.
Wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE), the technical term for tracking pathogens in sewage, holds a lot of promise…
