Wastewater Surveillance

For their study, the investigators, who are also members of UF’s Emerging Pathogens Institute, evaluated population normalization factors, which are used to determine the relative human fecal contribution in a sample. With this information, scientists can control for fluctuations in the population contributing to a wastewater sample throughout time while quantifying the SARS-CoV-2 wastewater concentrations.

University of Florida researchers are refining wastewater surveillance techniques—a public health tool dating to the 1940s—to monitor cities, neighborhoods, and individual buildings for traces of COVID-19, fentanyl, and pesticides.

UF researchers track COVID-19 trends in an island community’s wastewater. The approach has broad implications as a public health surveillance tool.