2/ UArizona is one of the schools that has determined to have some in-person classes, and to welcome students back to campus dorms. Students started moving into dorms about 2 weeks ago. Class started — on-line & in-person — Monday.
3/ As campus reopened, Arizona set up a system to test the wastewater leaving about 20 buildings on campus, including all the dorms that are occupied. Early work in Europe in the spring showed that people infected with coronavirus shed it into their stool very early.
4/ All dorms had been tested once and come up negative. On Tuesday, one dorm — Likins Hall — showed coronavirus in the wastewater. On Wednesday, all 311 residents of Likins were given antigen quick-tests. 2 residents were found to be positive — asymptomatic, but positive.
5/ Those 2 Arizona undergrads are in isolation at UA's isolation dorm now (& their contacts being traced). The other 309 residents of Likins: Back to covid-life-on-campus. Mind you, all 311 of those residents had already been tested once, on arrival, and come up negative.
6/ And the initial test of the dorm's wastewater last week was negative. So those 2 students caught the virus somewhere between coming back to school and Tuesday. But imagine what would have happened without the wastewater testing.
In Europe, it caught infections a week before anyone showed symptoms. In practice, at UArizona, that's exactly what happened: A dorm outbreak, detected, isolated, stopped in its tracks. This is how you do it.
Arizona has the scientists on campus to develop and manage its wastewater testing. But this is not arcane science. And to be clear: UA has 5,000 people living on-campus, but another 25,000 living off-campus. It could still have an outbreak, and have to go all-online.
Of course if Arizona could do wastewater testing on apartment buildings, they could go a long way to cutting down off-campus outbreaks.
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
UPDATE 8/31: Oregon State follows suit.
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