The University of Arizona says it contained a likely COVID-19 outbreak before it spread throughout the student body by testing localized wastewater.
The university said Thursday they had detected COVID-19 in a student dorm earlier in the week by testing wastewater from their dorms.
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Students had been moving into U of A two weeks ago but started classes Monday. Personnel took samples of sewage water twice a week from more than a dozen locations across the university, including their dorms.
Samples from one of their dorms found higher concentrations of the coronavirus. President Robert Robbins said of the more than 300 student residents, they found two that tested positive, albeit asymptomatic.
Once the two were removed from the facility, further testing came back negative for COVID-19.
The process comes from research in Europe that found infected people eject the virus in their stool early on in the infection.
In a conference call, officials explained that infected individuals expel COVID-19 around a week earlier than before they typically begin to show symptoms if they show them at all.
“You have seven precious days in which you can undergo intervention,” Dr. Ian Pepper, an environmental microbiologist at the University of Arizona Water and Energy Sustainable Technology Center, said.
He said the testing is very sensitive, having caught the two positive cases out of more than 300 residents of the student dorm.
