OSHKOSH, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) — They’re trying a new experiment to help keep COVID-19 under control at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh.
The university is one of many now testing wastewater for COVID-19.
“When we are searching, you know, for our very survival, innovation takes over,” said Richard Carmona, professor at the University of Arizona and former U.S. surgeon general.
Innovation has certainly taken over at UW-Oshkosh.
The university now has a secret weapon for sniffing out COVID-19, but it’s not pretty.
“That’s a dirtier matrix than, you know, saliva or something else, but we do a lot of that cleanup here,” Greg Kleinheinz, director of the Environmental Research and Innovation Center (ERIC) at UWO said.
The university does rapid and PCR testing, but this method doesn’t involve a nose or throat swab.
“We felt like this was one more tool in the toolbox we could use to keep students safe,” said Kleinheinz.
UWO is collecting wastewater samples from 10 student dormitories.
Researchers say this sewage surveillance can tell them where coronavirus is, even if students don’t have symptoms.
“We have a confined number of students in each of these buildings, and we can sample what’s coming out of each individual building,” Kleinheinz said. “We can look at the levels of COVID, as they go up, down and, hopefully, disappear in those buildings to determine if other targeted approaches need to be taken.”
UWO says it can stop an outbreak before it even happens.
The University of Arizona says it has proof.
When one dorm’s wastewater sample tested positive there in August, over 300 people were tested.
Positive results came back for two students, who had no symptoms.
“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,” Carmona said. “How many other people would have been infected?”
With COVID-19 proving to be the number one problem at colleges across the country, leaders at UWO say “number two” may be their best chance to flush it out.
“If we can use it and using the resources we have already on-campus to help prevent something from getting worse on our campus, it’s just a small part that we play in the overall process,” Kleinheinz said.
UWO runs these tests twice a week.
The university got its first set of results back Wednesday, but tells FOX 11 they won’t be releasing those results, at this time.
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