Researchers from the South Bay and Stanford have teamed up to study an unusual method of tracking the spread of COVID-19.
The team is monitoring human waste at four wastewater treatment plants across Santa Clara County for the virus.
“Essentially, we’re able to detect the relative concentrations of COVID in people’s stool that feeds to the wastewater treatment plant. And what we can do is use that information to compare to the other public health data we’ve received,” explained Michael Balliet, Santa Clara County Director of Environmental Health. “It helps us understand the case rates in the geographic areas that are represented by that wastewater treatment plant.”
The hope is that one day this data will be able to function as a sort of alarm bell to where outbreaks may be developing.
“We get the information on the wastewater before we get the clinical data. So the hope is that with future studies and as we continue to evaluate this is, we can have a couple of days’ lead time if we start to see significant increases,” said Balliet.
Knowing where outbreaks are developing can help public health officials target their response and react more quickly.
