Vox: “The first signs of the most recent Covid-19 waves have often been detected in our sewers instead of nasal swabs. But in the future, the potential for human waste to tell us about what is happening with our community’s health could extend far beyond the novel coronavirus. “This has been its coming-out party. We’ve realized the power in this pandemic,” John Dennehy, a biologist at the City University of New York who has been assisting with NYC’s wastewater surveillance program, told me. “Now there’s great interest in developing an infrastructure to sustain this capability beyond the pandemic.” Sewage surveillance is becoming more valuable right now as conventional testing is becoming less transparent. More people have been using rapid at-home tests and might not report results to a public health agency. That means the number of positive cases being reported by official sources might not actually provide a full picture of what’s happening with the pandemic…”

See also Science & Tech Spotlight: Wastewater Surveillance GAO-22-105841 Published: Apr 11, 2022. Publicly Released: Apr 11, 2022. “Public health officials have detected COVID-19 outbreaks through wastewater surveillance—testing for viruses that enter sewer systems in human waste. The technology has also been used to detect other pathogens and even chemicals, such as opioids. The recent pandemic spurred investment in wastewater surveillance. It could detect public health problems faster than individual testing—so why isn’t it more widely used? We provide an overview of the challenges, which include:

• Standardizing the science to produce more useful data
• Preventing privacy issues related to identifiable genetic data
• Demonstrating the technology’s value to support wider use.”