Epidemiologists are studying wastewater to gauge rates of COVID-19 infection.
People are exposed to a coronavirus through mucus membranes of the eyes, nose and mouth via respiratory droplets.through sewage data suggests that one metro region in Massachusetts that's reported fewer than 500 positive tests actually may actually have exponentially more.
Based on wastewater data, Biobot gave an estimate of anywhere from 2,300 to over 115,000 infected persons within the area sampled, though only 446 cases in the area had been reported. While the estimate had a very wide range, it was the discovery that there were likely many more infected people than revealed by numbers based on COVID-19 clinical testing alone that set off alarms.
While the COVID-19 mapping project is new, the science of wastewater epidemiology is well established and peer-reviewed. Its most notable use was thein 2013 of a polio outbreak in Israel via wastewater monitoring, prompting a mass vaccination campaign that experts say likely prevented an epidemic. Such technology is now being used by several universities and private labs for monitoring COVID-19.
Newsweek about the findings."We still have additional follow up experiments to perform before we can say exactly how many undiagnosed cases there might be, but we believe it could be significantly higher than the number of confirmed cases."A steel manhole cover on Nov. 4, 2012 in Boston, Mass.in the Journal of the American Medical Association indicating that COVID-19 could be detected in fecal matter.
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