Why recent COVID levels in Jupiter-area sewage are giving officials cause for optimism
The Loxahatchee River District is using wastewater testing to predict COVID-19 cases, joining cities such as Houston.
JUPITER — As the number of COVID-19 cases gradually falls across the country, recent sewage testing in the Jupiter area points to an 81% decrease in virus levels in wastewater.
That's cause for optimism, officials say.
The Loxahatchee River Environmental Control District, which provides sewage services for about 100,000 customers in northern Palm Beach County, collected wastewater samples from its treatment facility Sept. 19 and Sept. 20 and sent them to Massachusetts-based Biobot Analytics to determine the presence of the coronavirus.
Test results from two separate samples show that virus levels in wastewater dropped substantially through September, following the area's peak levels in late August.
"We were encouraged to see the sampling we took two-and-a-half weeks ago showed a marked difference, and last week's tests kept that trend," Bud Howard, the district's director of information services, told The Palm Beach Post. "It's pretty remarkable."
The new drop in virus levels mirrors levels recorded in late May and June this year, when the state finally was starting to take a breath and be encouraged by falling case numbers.
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How does wastewater sampling for COVID-19 work?
Wastewater shows virus fragments that appear before someone with COVID-19 even is symptomatic.
Since infected people often shed the most virus at the beginning of their infection, wastewater testing can give the public and health officials a five-to-10 day lead on new clinical cases, Howard said.
While many Americans use COVID-19 case numbers and deaths to make decisions, universal delays in reporting those numbers have caused confusion among communities and a reactive nature to local pandemic regulations.
In Florida, the state even temporarily stopped reporting daily case numbers to the public in early summer.
But wastewater testing helps scientists see the near future, since people shed "enormous" amounts of virus in their waste far before they're either symptomatic or test positive.
"That's what was so exciting about it," Howard said. "What a wonderful opportunity it is to have this information that is forward-looking."
The district has set up a webpage with graphs charting the concentration of coronavirus fragments in its wastewater alongside Florida Department of Health case data across three Jupiter-area ZIP codes — 33458 in central Jupiter, 33477 along the coast and 33469 on the river's north shore.
Will sewage testing be a COVID indicator nationwide?
Epidemiologists point to sewage testing as a scientific breakthrough that helps eliminate barriers to effective testing.
"It is a cost-effective way to survey transmission dynamics of entire communities," David Larsen and Krista Wigginton wrote in a September 2020 article published by the journal Nature Biotechnology. "It collects data from people who lack access to healthcare. And if it were successful in revealing infection dynamics earlier than diagnostic testing, it could provide public-health officials with near-real-time information on disease prevalence."
Local governments are counting on that.
While the Loxahatchee River District is the only service testing wastewater for COVID in Palm Beach County, cities including Houston and Chesapeake, Virginia, have joined universities in testing for the virus and acting accordingly.
The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services started the National Wastewater Surveillance System to generate data that informs public-health decisions.
"Depending on the frequency of testing, sewage surveillance can be a leading indicator of changes in COVID-19 burden in a community," according to the CDC.
Sewage detection is "a COVID-19 indicator that is independent of healthcare-seeking behaviors and access to clinical testing," per the CDC. The agency has used wastewater to test for other diseases, such as polio.
The Loxahatchee River District doesn't test human wastewater for any other types of viruses, but Howard said the district uses samples from the river itself to track pollution. Results from the testing cannot be traced to individual households or neighborhoods.