Dr. Lauren Stadler: SARS-CoV-2 Wastewater Monitoring

What if we could know how widespread COVID-19 is in our communities, in a low-cost way, that everyone automatically opts in to, with no additional effort? In this episode, Dr. Lauren Stadler tells us how her lab shifted from studying microbial communities in wastewater to monitoring levels of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in wastewater. Dr. Stadler explains how SARS-CoV-2 ends up in wastewater and how it can be used to track COVID-19 positivity rates. She discusses the incredible power and potential of this new form of community testing. For instance, she describes how the government is catching on to its power, the cost compared to individual testing, and how sequencing wastewater could give us additional information on how the virus is being transmitted.