The same wastewater surveillance techniques that have emerged as a critical tool in early detection of COVID-19 outbreaks are being adapted for use in monitoring the startling spread of monkeypox across the San Francisco Bay Area and some other U.S. communities.
Before the COVID pandemic, wastewater sludge was thought to hold promise as an early indicator of community health threats, in part because people can excrete genetic evidence of infectious diseases in their feces, often before they develop symptoms of illness. Israel has for decades monitored wastewater for polio. But before COVID, such risk monitoring in the U.S. was limited largely to academic pursuits.
With the onset of COVID, a research collaboration that involves scientists at Stanford University, the University of Michigan, and Emory University pioneered efforts to recalibrate the surveillance techniques for detection of the COVID-19 virus, marking the first time that wastewater has been used to track a respiratory disease.
