Wastewater testing provides an early warning of community coronavirus levels, researcher says

David Freedman of Clemson University is testing coronavirus levels in wastewater on the University’s main campus and in the surrounding community to provide an early warning system that shows how fast the virus is spreading. Freedman likens the tests to the “canary in the coal mine” that can help administrators make informed decisions about what they need to do to protect the public’s health even before COVID-19 case counts start to rise. In addition to campus, his testing covers the city of Clemson and the Town of Pendleton, both home to many of the University’s students, faculty and staff.

Clemson City Council unanimously passed an ordinance on June 24 that mandated face coverings in several circumstances in public after Freedman found surprisingly high virus levels at the city’s Cochran Road wastewater treatment plant. The ordinance cited “elevated levels of virus in the community similar to levels in other cities in which an outbreak of the virus was about to occur or was well underway.”

Previous studies first done in Europe have shown that the virus starts showing up in wastewater as much as 1-2 weeks before clinical symptoms are reported, said Freedman, who is chair of the University’s Department of Environmental Engineering and Earth Sciences.

“Even before people are coughing and getting a fever, they’ll start shedding the virus in their feces, and that will show up in the wastewater,” Freedman said. Freedman once or twice a week collects wastewater samples from one campus plant and two municipal plants and sends them to a lab in Knoxville, Tennessee. He has developed a system for interpreting the results that the lab returns.

Read the full story from Clemson University here.