NEW HAVEN, Conn. — Yale University has been analyzing wastewater at 6 treatment plants across the state to see whether a covid outbreak is happening in a community.
The data is clear. There is an outbreak across the state.
While wastewater data cannot predict the future, it can give us a real-time depiction of what is happening in our communities right now.
COVID is exponentially growing across the state. And experts say it is here to stay.
"We are in an outbreak and we are in exponential growth," says Jordan Peccia, a Professor of Environmental Engineering at Yale. "We have done better than many states and we had a good summer comparatively. But that’s very different than the situation we find ourselves in right now. And so, I think this is the time to try and follow the public health precautions as much as we can. "
Data is collected from six different treatment plants, which represents nearly one million people in Connecticut. It allows for an accurate real-time view at how widespread COVID is in the state.
"It’s more rapid than testing," says Peccia.
It takes a few days to get test data compiled and make it available.
"And so, our data is usually five to six days ahead of that," says Peccia. "And so, we can take our wastewater data. We can use some algorithms we’ve developed to convert it into case data for the times when the state doesn’t have case data. And we can see a little bit more into the future than you can with current case data."
For now, they are tracking an outbreak.
"The next important thing to do with wastewater in addition to keep on monitoring is to try and statistically find out as early as we can when cases are starting to go down," says Peccia.
He urges everyone to take a look at the data yourself daily.