Quote:
Some big news out of the University of Arizona (
@uarizona
):
UA scientists & staff found a coronavirus outbreak on campus *before it happened* and seem to have snuffed it out.
How in the world do you do that?
You use wastewater testing.
UArizona is one of the schools that has determined to have some in-person classes, and to welcome students back to campus dorms.
Students started moving into dorms about 2 weeks ago.
Class started on-line & in-person Monday.
As campus reopened, Arizona set up a system to test the wastewater leaving about 20 buildings on campus, including all the dorms that are occupied.
Early work in Europe in the spring showed that people infected with coronavirus shed it into their stool very early.
All dorms had been tested once and come up negative.
On Tuesday, one dorm Likins Hall showed coronavirus in the wastewater.
On Wednesday, all 311 residents of Likins were given antigen quick-tests. 2 residents were found to be positive asymptomatic, but positive.
Those 2 Arizona undergrads are in isolation at UA's isolation dorm now (& their contacts being traced).
The other 309 residents of Likins: Back to covid-life-on-campus.
Mind you, all 311 of those residents had already been tested once, on arrival, and come up negative.
And the initial test of the dorm's wastewater last week was negative.
So those 2 students caught the virus somewhere between coming back to school and Tuesday.
But imagine what would have happened without the wastewater testing.
Those two students would have wandered their dorm, asymptomatic, likely infecting their fellow students unknowingly.
Then instead of 2 students in Likins being infected, you might have had 10.
Those students would have been out and about on campus, and in Tucson.
Arizona doesn't yet have a follow-up testing regime for its students living on-campus. You had to be negative to move into the dorms, there is talk of testing everyone every 2 weeks but for now, more testing is voluntary.
(You can get a quick test every day if you want.)
But wastewater testing is a reasonable surrogate.
In Europe, it caught infections a week before anyone showed symptoms.
In practice, at UArizona, that's exactly what happened: A dorm outbreak, detected, isolated, stopped in its tracks.
This is how you do it.
Seems like a good option for large dorms and apartment complexes.