A professor and computer scientist working at DiscoverDPI have been using Chicago’s wastewater to identify viral COVID-19 hot spots, a process involving tampons and sewers. So far, the data correlates closely with the city’s public health data.
As pandemic data collection is increasingly questioned and criticized, some scientists are turning to sewage for solid answers. Wastewater epidemiology can provide useful information about COVID-19’s resurgence and clues about what to expect in coming months.
University of Illinois at Chicago associate professor Rachel Poretsky is doing sewage surveillance through the University of Illinois’ Discovery Partners Institute. Poretsky is co-leading a team with computer scientist Charlie Catlett that’s using Chicago wastewater to identify viral hot spots. “When there’s incomplete data, or holes in the data, that’s when wastewater data is really useful,” said Poretsky. “At each stage of the pandemic there were citywide and nationwide testing challenges.
Poretsky and Charlie Catlett came up with a creative, low-cost solution to capturing more accurate pandemic data. A tampon is placed inside a small protective cage and lowered into a city sewer. Twice a week the maintenance hole is lifted, the cage is removed, and its contents are collected. So far, the data they’ve collected correlates closely with public health data for Chicago.
Poretsky and Catlett have been doing Chicago sewage surveillance since 2020 and are hopeful the data they’re collecting will prove useful in tracking future infectious diseases, playing an important role in public health. “We save a small vial of each sample we collect. That’s creating all kinds of records of what’s happening in our city,” said Catlett. “Because we weren’t collecting sewer samples in 2019, we don’t know when COVID first showed up.
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