Study: "Sewer sludge" detects COVID outbreaks days faster than contact tracing

In the study, published last week in the journal Nature Biotechnology, researchers began taking daily samples from a New Haven-area wastewater treatment plant, which serves multiple towns in Connecticut including New Haven, East Haven, Hamden and parts of Woodbridge.

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The study’s results, which span 10 weeks from March 19 to June 1, found that testing sewers for Covid-19 — collecting samples from the “primary sewage sludge” of settled solids — produces transmission trends that are “very similar” to those of contact tracing, but come about “six to eight” days earlier.

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