Transcript
Believe it or not, our excrement could be one of our best hopes of quickly detecting coronavirus outbreaks.
That’s because the disease can be detected in feces even before people get coronavirus tests.
German research institutes in the city of Leipzig are right in the middle of a massive trial.
The hope: locating new breaks fast by finding the virus in wastewater.
Researchers say it’s a nasty, stinky job but if they find a concentration of coronavirus in the wastewater, they can possibly calculate the number of infected people in the area.
Germany is among several countries experimenting to see whether sewage could be a Covid-19 early warning system.
The biggest problem: finding even the smallest traces of the virus in a large cesspool of sewage and sludge.
But if they succeed in the future, sudden spikes of coronavirus in samples from certain sewage plants could tell authorities where new outbreaks are happening and allow them to react quickly.
With that knowledge, authorities could then initiate targeted testing for those areas to quickly contain outbreaks.
The scientists acknowledge they still have a long and difficult way to go.
But they are confident they might indeed find a way to turn feces into a natural coronavirus alarm.
Posted – 5.29.20