Yale’s wastewater sampling project – an effort to predict outbreaks of COVID-19 in communities – has expanded to several locations in Connecticut.
Yale researchers have been sampling New Haven-area wastewater treatment plants since March, and consistently found that the increases and decreases of the virus in sewage sludge have predicted the results reported by individual testing with a lead time five to seven days.
Now, in partnership with the state and the Connecticut Agricultural Experimental Station, Yale has expanded the program to Bridgeport, Stamford, Hartford, New London and Norwich. The locations were chosen largely because they’re high-population areas that had COVID-19 outbreaks in the spring.