Pretty cool.

quote:

New website tracks and shares COVID-19 levels in Illinois wastewater to help residents ‘make informed decisions’

The site offers snapshots of COVID-19 transmission in communities around 75 wastewater treatment facilities in Illinois.

https://chicago.suntimes.com/c...ublic-health-omicron

IIRC, the CDC was using wastewater tracking at the beginning of COVID to track its spread nationally.

Yeah, the municipality where I live was coordinating with my uni and they were working together to track wastewater numbers. They published them weekly.

I don't know when they stopped publishing them, but they don't any more. I don't know if there's any kind of monitoring going on either.

This seems like the most accurate way to track.

People don’t have to report their home covid tests, so we really don’t know how many people have it at any given time.

Hospitals report how many covid patients they have, some of whom are hospitalized for reasons other than covid. But it’s a slightly helpful number to track/compare over time.

Our county has been doing wastewater testing from the beginning. It is really the only reliable way to track because people either aren't testing at all, or they aren't reporting their tests.

They aren't wearing masks either.

the only other thing I pay attention to is hospitalizations. those are up while test results are down.

I paid a visit to the ER a few weeks ago, and asked a nurse how many COVID patients there were in the hospital (our only one).

She said she wasn't allowed to disclose the figure.

Is this common?

If I recall correctly, the way they knew that the new, highly contagious variant was spreading in NYC was through wastewater testing.

When polio emerged in NY, they posted results of tests for that virus in nearby areas IIRC.

Wastewater tracking seems like as noninvasive a method as possible to track general trends in the population of an area. I like the idea of this information being publicly available.

As I think I've mentioned before, while I was hospitalized for my most recent knee surgeries, I was tested for COVID in anticipation of being transferred to another ward. I tested positive to a PCR test and was isolated for 10 days, even though I tested negative on an antigen test administered the same day. I had been unaware of having an infection.

I think all the home tests are antigen tests so I think there would be some underreporting of infections even if every home test result were to be reported.

Big Al

Look what showed up in the WSJ (link should work):

quote:

For Future Viral Threats, Health Officials Look to Sewage
New York analyzes wastewater for flu, RSV and polio, in addition to Covid-19

https://www.wsj.com/articles/f...opwebshare_permalink

This reminds me of when people in Honolulu would fall into wastewater ditches and bacteria would eat the flesh off their bones.

We didn't hear this from the tourism authority but certainly read it in the news.