Poop could help stop the pandemic. Really.

Wastewater offers a promising way to track the virus, a top CDC doctor says.

The federal government is eyeing a new strategy for monitoring the spread of the deadly coronavirus. It involves poop.

The U.S. has struggled to keep pace with other advanced countries on coronavirus testing, and now is considering tracking the spread of the virus through sewage systems as a way to predict where the next hot spot may be.

Jay Butler, deputy director for infectious diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, raised the intriguing possibility on Monday in a conference call with private-sector representatives, according to audio of the call reviewed by POLITICO. Most of the discussion had the grave and staid tone that has characterized public health officials’ conversations about the virus that has infected more than 1 million Americans and killed more than 60,000. Butler fielded prescreened questions on a host of buttoned-up topics, including face-mask use, sick leave and contact tracing.

Then he got a question about wastewater.

“There is not a lot of evidence of transmission through stools,” he said. “I know at least one tabloid in the UK got a lot of coverage by someone speculating that Covid-19 could be spread by flatulence or, to quote the headline, by farting. There really is not a lot of science behind that.”

But, he continued, the virus can sometimes be present in human waste — and that may be a feature, not a bug.

The federal government is eyeing a new strategy for monitoring the spread of the deadly coronavirus. It involves poop.

The U.S. has struggled to keep pace with other advanced countries on coronavirus testing, and now is considering tracking the spread of the virus through sewage systems as a way to predict where the next hot spot may be.

Jay Butler, deputy director for infectious diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, raised the intriguing possibility on Monday in a conference call with private-sector representatives, according to audio of the call reviewed by POLITICO. Most of the discussion had the grave and staid tone that has characterized public health officials’ conversations about the virus that has infected more than 1 million Americans and killed more than 60,000. Butler fielded prescreened questions on a host of buttoned-up topics, including face-mask use, sick leave and contact tracing.

Then he got a question about wastewater.

“There is not a lot of evidence of transmission through stools,” he said. “I know at least one tabloid in the UK got a lot of coverage by someone speculating that Covid-19 could be spread by flatulence or, to quote the headline, by farting. There really is not a lot of science behind that.”

But, he continued, the virus can sometimes be present in human waste — and that may be a feature, not a bug.

The federal government is eyeing a new strategy for monitoring the spread of the deadly coronavirus. It involves poop.

The U.S. has struggled to keep pace with other advanced countries on coronavirus testing, and now is considering tracking the spread of the virus through sewage systems as a way to predict where the next hot spot may be.

Jay Butler, deputy director for infectious diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, raised the intriguing possibility on Monday in a conference call with private-sector representatives, according to audio of the call reviewed by POLITICO. Most of the discussion had the grave and staid tone that has characterized public health officials’ conversations about the virus that has infected more than 1 million Americans and killed more than 60,000. Butler fielded prescreened questions on a host of buttoned-up topics, including face-mask use, sick leave and contact tracing.

Then he got a question about wastewater.

“There is not a lot of evidence of transmission through stools,” he said. “I know at least one tabloid in the UK got a lot of coverage by someone speculating that Covid-19 could be spread by flatulence or, to quote the headline, by farting. There really is not a lot of science behind that.”

But, he continued, the virus can sometimes be present in human waste — and that may be a feature, not a bug. Recent research out of the Netherlands has shown that the virus’ genetic material, or RNA, can be detected in wastewater as much as two weeks before the first diagnosis of a sick patient by a doctor, said Peter Grevatt, a former Environmental Protection Agency water official who now runs the nonprofit Water Research Foundation. His group this week convened a summit of wastewater utility leaders, researchers, and other experts to chart a path forward on the method.

“There is some near-term potential to use this sewer-shed monitoring as a signal of a trend, and it seems that there could be tremendous value in that as we’re reopening economies around the world and there’s so much uncertainty about what will happen next,” he said.

But, he added, there are still major scientific gaps that limit the method’s usefulness.

While wastewater monitoring can detect the presence of the virus in the community, researchers can’t yet correlate the number of infected individuals with the concentrations of virus they find. That’s because it’s not yet known how shedding rates vary among individuals, including among those with moderate, severe, or asymptomatic cases of Covid-19. Scientists also don’t know how long individuals keep shedding the virus after they recover.

The EPA, which regulates wastewater treatment plants, said it is coordinating with the CDC to kick off scientifically sound monitoring in areas hit hard by the virus.

“EPA is currently coordinating sewage sampling and storage protocols with CDC to start sewage surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 with wastewater utilities in multiple cities with a high number of current confirmed cases,” the agency said in a statement.

www.politico.com

Posted by on May 15 2020. Filed under top stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry

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