A recently published study showed that testing done on sludge from wastewater treatment plants in Newhaven, Connecticut was able to track the progression of COVID-19 up to seven days before that same pattern was shown in official testing data.
“We can take a wastewater sample, we can capture that sample in the morning, we can bring it back to our lab and we can get you a number that afternoon,” said Jordan Peccia, Yale Professor of Chemical and Environmental Engineering and the author of the study.
The analysis of the test is the same as that done on an individual coronavirus nasal swab, except it’s done on a sludge sample, said Peccia, a guest on KCBS Radio’s “Ask An Expert.”
The testing is pooled and detects the concentration of the virus in the treatment plant.
There is a connection between the number of cases and the number of viruses in the water, Peccia said.
“If you graph the two, you’ll see cases look like the standard epidemic curve that we all know, and the wastewater virus concentration curve will look exactly the same way,” he told KCBS Radio.
However, the wastewater curve will be shifted slightly to the left, or occurring earlier in time, Peccia noted.
Plus, with just one sludge sample, 200,000 people can be tested.
“Now imagine what the logistics are, in doing that for that many people who go up to a drive-in center, all the different drive in centers around the city,” he said.
Most individual testing sites have results back within days.
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