What's in the Water (and How I Check)
·4 mins
The CDC has been tracking COVID-19 by measuring RNA concentrations in sewage.
No, really. Public health departments collect wastewater from treatment plants, test it for SARS-CoV-2 genetic material, and publish the data. The idea is that people shed the virus in stool days before symptoms show up — which means wastewater is an early warning system that doesn’t depend on anyone getting tested.