SAN FRANCISCO (KCBS RADIO) – Officials analyzing wastewater testing say the current COVID-19 surge could be the largest the Bay Area has experienced since the start of the pandemic.
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The level of COVID-19 in the region has historically lined up accurately with waste water levels.
"Wastewater has been used by researchers in the California Department of Public Health since the beginning of the pandemic to understand the occurrence of COVID-19 in the communities that contribute to the waste water,” Alexandria Boehm, professor of environmental engineering at Stanford, told KCBS Radio.
However, recently the two data sets don't add up. The Bay Area is currently averaging 3,500 new COVID cases a day, but researchers think it's actually much higher than that because many residents are using at-home tests and those results aren't available to public health departments.
"What we're seeing now is a separation with the wastewater levels going up, and the case numbers staying relatively flat, which to me means there are a lot more cases around than are not getting reported, which is not surprising because we have home testing that don’t feed into the laboratory based reporting system,” Dr. George Rutherford, professor of epidemiology at UCSF, explained to KCBS Radio.
The lack of home testing information makes waste water testing even more vital.
"Now the wastewater remains a very good source for information about the number of cases of COVID-19 in the contributing community, whereas the case data is not a great indicator of the number of infections because so many people are using rapid tests at home," Boehm said.
Based on wastewater analysis, officials believe the case-rate spike the Bay Area is experiencing right now could be even greater than the omicron surge.
"What the waste water tells us is regardless of how severe the illness is, regardless of the risk landscape, there are many cases of infections of COVID-19, almost as many if not more than there were during the omicron surge," Boehm explained.
Rutherford said he thinks the current surge is "at least on the same order of magnitude" as last winter's outbreak.
"I would imagine it’s around 60 or 66% of what the winter surge was this past year, but it’s substantial and that’s what you have to realize. It’s really big," he explained.
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