Please ensure Javascript is enabled for purposes ofwebsite accessibility

Virginia Tech researchers to test campus wastewater for COVID-19


{p}Virginia Tech researchers say they will test wastewater at 15 campus sites for the coronavirus. (Virginia Tech){/p}

Virginia Tech researchers say they will test wastewater at 15 campus sites for the coronavirus. (Virginia Tech)

Facebook Share IconTwitter Share IconEmail Share Icon

BLACKSBURG, Va. (WSET) -- Virginia Tech researchers say they will test wastewater at 15 campus sites for the coronavirus.

They say it will allow the university to monitor clusters of campus buildings on a daily basis, testing for the presence of the virus in fecal matter.

According to the researchers, if the testing shows positive results, the university can then conduct targeted testing among individuals in those buildings to zero in on possible infections.

“The general idea is that people who are sick with COVID-19 excrete the virus or viral RNA in their feces, and it ends up in sewers,” said Peter Vikesland, professor of civil and environmental engineering. “That signal can be detected for a period of time after people are sick, and you can potentially detect it before you start to see clinical cases.”

The team led by Vikesland, civil and environmental engineering professor Amy Pruden, and Ph.D. candidate Ayella Maile-Moskowitz has been conducting sampling at five campus sites to test the process.

The office of Virginia Tech’s vice president for research and innovation and the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering has invested $200,000 to expand the project to 15 sites on the Blacksburg campus.

"As we saw researchers around the world testing their wastewater for COVID we thought it would be interesting to see if we could too, since we already examine wastewater for pathogens and viruses in our lab," Maile-Moskowitz said. "As it became clear that the pandemic was not going anywhere, we saw it as an opportunity to help the university in determining where outbreaks might be occurring around campus, especially as an early warning system."

Each site can be monitored daily, with the samples then sent to the Molecular Diagnostics Laboratory at the Fralin Biomedical Research Institute at VTC, which is processing clinical swabs for COVID-19 testing for the Roanoke and New River valleys.

“The whole idea is conceptually very simple,” said Carla Finkielstein, director of the lab and associate professor in the Department of Biological Sciences. “If you really think, what we want here is to somehow use a broad way to test a community and find out if there’s any potential COVID outbreak coming. The idea is to identify the virus before spreading. One of the most difficult things is identifying those cases that are pre-symptomatic and asymptomatic. By doing this kind of sewage epidemiology, you’re getting a snapshot of what is going on in the population that doesn’t show any symptoms of the disease. You can detect the virus before anybody has any symptoms.”

To learn more about Virginia Tech's response to COVID-19, go here.

Loading ...