GET A FLU SHOT
The University of Arizona found early signs of COVID-19 in a student dorm this week by testing wastewater and were able to head off an outbreak there, school leaders announced Thursday.
Researchers at the school have looked for traces of the virus in wastewater samples taken from the greater Tucson area since March and have gathered samples from 20 buildings on the UA campus since school started.
Earlier this week, data collected from the dorms found higher viral loads in wastewater samples taken from Likins Hall. A team led by Dr. Ian Pepper, director of the UA’s Water and Energy Sustainable Technology Center, tested the samples five more times to confirm the findings, said UA President Dr. Robert Robbins.
The university on Wednesday tested the entire dorm, about 311 people, and found two positive cases, Robbins said.
The two individuals, who were asymptomatic, are now in isolation, preventing further spread in Likins Hall.
Wastewater testing provides more data
UA required students living on campus to get tested for COVID-19 before returning to the dorms. Both positive individuals would have been tested, and would have had negative results prior to moving into the dorms, per UA’s protocols.
Off-campus students were strongly encouraged to get tested for COVID-19, and the university also will regularly test random populations on campus.
The wastewater testing provides a way to monitor for potential cases, particularly asymptomatic ones, beyond individual tests for the virus, UA leaders said.
Pepper and his team will regularly collect wastewater samples from buildings on campus, including all dorms, throughout the school year, he told The Republic in July.
The data will help determine a possible outbreak in a specific building or dorm, help the school test students and mitigate the spread of the virus, he said.
Looking beyond UA’s campus
The wastewater analysis is part of a larger effort to study the virus’s presence in Tucson’s sewage system.
Researchers have detected traces of the virus in untreated wastewater samples taken at the Pima County Wastewater Treatment Plant. They have not detected the virus in treated wastewater.
Genetic material from the virus can shed in the feces of infected patients, whether they are symptomatic or asymptomatic, but little is still known about how much of the virus is shed in stool or how long it is shed, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Pepper’s team is now working to develop a model that could help establish the connection between the concentration in the wastewater and the number of people infected in the community.
They hope it could help researchers identify new cases before people are tested, whether transmission levels are improving and detect a possible reemergence of the virus.
Arizona State University researchers are doing similar work in Tempe and city leaders there are using the information to target outreach and testing in areas with where there are high concentrations of the virus in wastewater samples.
Finding the Likins cases shows the
“We jumped on it right away, tested those youngsters and got them the appropriate isolation where they needed to be.”
Dr. Richard Carmona
Reentry Task Force director at the University of Arizona
value of this method, said Dr. Richard Carmona, the former U.S. Surgeon General who is leading UA’s reentry effort.
“Nobody would have known that otherwise, but with that early detection, we jumped on it right away, tested those youngsters and got them the appropriate isolation where they needed to be,” Carmona said at the press conference. “And you think about if we had missed it, if we had waited until they became symptomatic, and they stayed in that dorm for days, or a week or the whole incubation period, how many other people would have been infected?”