Today’s number two story
Published April 27, 2020
How can you find where the coronavirus is spreading without going door to door? Test the poop, of course. Not individually, but in the community wastewater.Around the world, scientists are detecting remnants of the virus in municipal sewage. Sampling our stool could offer a faster and cheaper way to pinpoint where outbreaks of COVID-19 are brewing before scores of people become seriously ill, they argue. This technique also picks up virus bits that were “shed” by people whose mild or asymptomatic infections often go unnoticed.The most important quote: “We can actually measure hundreds of thousands of people with a single sample.” The most amusing quote: “You get information that cannot be produced by any other means.”
