By: Brooke Fisher Photos: Mark Stone / University of Washington Top image: A utility hole underneath the NE 45th Street Viaduct near UW’s campus, where researchers gather wastewater samples. Running underneath just about every residential home, apartment building, college residence hall and nursing home is a surprisingly valuable resource for detecting and monitoring COVID-19 outbreaks by neighborhood: the sewer system. To more quickly and economically detect COVID-19 outbreaks, as well as reduce the burden of individual testing, a UW civil and environmental engineering-led research team is working to introduce a new testing system that utilizes wastewater samples from neighborhood pump stations. Additional benefits of the method include accounting for asymptomatic people and reaching vulnerable populations, such as lower-income communities with higher rates of infection and less access to healthcare and individual testing.