KWR in the news G.J. Medema - How data became one of the most powerful tools to fight an epidemic

“As public-health experts have known since the 19th century, information can be the best medicine. What new data streams could help quell future outbreaks?”
“On Feb. 6, Medema and his colleagues gathered sewage samples from six points in the Netherlands, including a waste-treatment plant near Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport, on the premise that the virus could potentially first arrive via air travel. The results came back negative. But a month later, when the outbreak was still in its earliest stages in the Netherlands, they returned to the same locations to collect samples. This time, they found evidence of the virus in several of the locations. “If we compare our prior sewage reporting with the number of reported cases,” Medema says, “it looks likely we can pick up the signal of the virus if we are at about one in 100,000 people reported infected.” (A preliminary study of a sewage-treatment plant in New Haven, Conn., this spring showed that presence of the virus in wastewater peaked seven days before reported Covid-19 cases.) In Farr’s era, sewage was a primary cause of epidemics. But in the 21st century, sewage might well offer us important data to contain their spread.”

(Citations: Johnson, S. – KWR in the news G.J. Medema – How data became one of the most powerful tools to fight an epidemic – www.nytimes.com (2020)10 June)