How sewage could hold the key to containing future Covid-19 outbreaks
- Scientists say testing and tracking virus remnants in waste water and sewer sludge could help build an early warning system
- Researchers have monitored for viruses like polio in waste water for years, but a method for the new coronavirus is still in the works
Down a gravel pathway, past a scattering of discarded needles and food wrappers and beneath a graffiti-sprayed overpass for Tacoma’s East 32nd Street, lies a portal into public health.
For millennia, sewer systems have carried off waste and disease. More recently, they’ve drawn coronavirus-searching scientists in their wake.
On a Friday last month, Chad Atkinson, a senior environmental technician for Tacoma, lifted up a maintenance hole cover with a metal hook.
The stench of decomposition pricked the nostrils as a torch beam illuminated a stream of untreated waste water flowing past globs of fatty muck below. The waste of some 17,000 Tacoma residents drains through this site, including sewage from several retirement communities and the nearby Emerald Queen Casino.
Senior environmental specialist Steve Shortencarrier jabbed an extendable pole into the sanitary sewer, rubbed an attached shop towel on the sludge and pulled it to the surface.
Then, Gina Chang, a student intern volunteering with a nearby biotech laboratory, dabbed and twisted a pair of swabs on the soiled towel, before snapping the samples off into vials with preservative liquid for testing.