Daily News | The clues are in the poop: COVID-19 sewage testing is coming to Philly
has shown that wastewater has the potential to help estimate the “true” number of cases in a community.
Peccia has gotten around the problem by studying concentrations over time together with other testing data. Philadelphia first started testing wastewater in May 2020, just two months after the city’s first reported case. Over the next year, as part of a $140,000 pilot program, the Philadelphia Water Department each week sampled wastewater from three sewage treatment plants that handle all the wastewater the city produces.“We essentially take 100 milliliters of wastewater and concentrate it down into a pellet that we then analyze for the virus,” said Murphy, an epidemiology professor.
Philadelphia was awarded funding last August to restart surveillance and join the CDC’s national program. It took almost seven months before the city signed a $700,000 contract with Temple, two weeks ago, to conduct wastewater testing through July. That will likely be extended by three to six months.The city described the delay as a routine part of contracting.
“Increasing the number of samples a week should help us with respect to not only figuring out if we actually have signals, but also establishing better trend lines,” Lojo said.
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