Daily News | Testing sewage for COVID is providing valuable data, but Philly seeks to get faster results
Philadelphia is using its sewage to monitor COVID-19, but the promise of that early warning system is hindered by the reality of slow turnaround times.
The city just started releasing information last week from the program, which shows the technique can work. But the turnaround time is still slow: The most recent data publicly available are from Sept. 19. By next month, if hires and equipment purchases happen, the city hopes to get test results in a day and a half, using a newly opened health department lab that canOne local expert in wastewater testing, Charles Haas, a professor of environmental engineering at Drexel University, said the technology can be valuable, but the health department also should make the data easy to understand and interpret.“The more real time they can make it, the better,” he said.
“If we start to see danger signs there and we let Philadelphians know, not everybody’s going to mask,” Bettigole said, “but a lot of people are going to start taking precautions again.”Philly’s wastewater testing for COVID is up and running, but city has yet to share dataThrough much of the pandemic, the PCR or antigen tests available at hospitals and pharmacies provided a reliable gauge of COVID’s spread because they were reported to health officials.
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