Monitoring Wastewater as an Early Indicator of COVID-19 Outbreak Dynamics

With limitations on COVID-19 testing making it difficult to know how widespread the virus is, researchers at Yale University are looking to wastewater for a more accurate picture of the epidemic. “If a disease shows up in a community, it shows up in the wastewater" says Jordan Peccia, PhD, of the Yale School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and Yale School of Medicine. Along with Saad Omer, PhD, and Edward Kaplan, PhD, Peccia is leading efforts to measure the concentration of COVID-19 in wastewater samples within New Haven. In the long term, daily wastewater surveillance could provide an early warning if/when flare ups or hotspots of the virus occur.