Sarah Jacoby is a health reporter at TODAY.
Should you still wear a mask in public? Is it safe to attend concerts or travel right now? Experts are increasingly recommending that we consult COVID-19 wastewater data to make decisions like these. And, they say, the pandemic revealed the true potential of monitoring what's in our poop. Wastewater monitoring isn't entirely new. Epidemiologists have been using it to keep track of polio outbreaks for decades, Amy Kirby, Ph.D.
For example, if heavy rain dilutes rainwater, it can be challenging to account for that in interpretations, he says. Ye stresses that public health officials are only looking at this data at the community level. They're not monitoring wastewater at the individual or household level. And, for the record, researchers believe the viral particles in feces to be inactive, Ye says. To date, no one has contracted COVID-19 via exposure to wastewater, the CDC says.
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