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In earlier days of the COVID-19 pandemic, before diagnostic testing was widely available, it was difficult for public health officials to keep track of the infection’s spread or predict where outbreaks were likely to occur. Attempts to get ahead of the coronavirus that causes the disease are still complicated by the fact that people can be infected and spread the virus even without experiencing symptoms themselves.
When studies emerged showing that people testing positive for the virus — whether symptomatic or not — shed it in their stool, “the sewer seemed like the ‘happening’ place to look for it,” said Smruthi Karthikeyan, an environmental engineer and postdoctoral researcher at the UC San Diego School of Medicine in La Jolla.