LEXINGTON, Ky. — Since the beginning of the school year, the University of Kentucky has added multiple COVID-19 testing procedures to help detect signs of the virus.
What You Need To Know
- UK health experts are using wastewater testing to detect early spread of COVID-19
- Water is sourced through sewage water around campus, mainly between residence halls
- Process helps pinpoint which residence hall contains COVID-positive students
- University plans to continue the practice through the spring semester
Wastewater testing at the University of Kentucky is helping locate and detect early signs of COVID-19. Using the manholes around campus and sewage water in between residence halls.
James Keck, an assistant professor at the University says this testing is just another way they’re working towards creating a safer campus.
“Half of the people who are sick have no symptoms. So a lot of the symptom screening that happens you know they have a fever they have a new cough, unfortunately is only going to catch you know maybe half of the people with the illness, so these kinds of surveillance tools like wastewater might be able to find those folks, before they're able to spread it to other people in the community,” Keck said.
Using a machine they take a sample from a collection of the wastewater that has been sitting in the manhole for about a week. They then fill bottles with the samples, keep the bottles in a cooler and transfer them to the lab where professors and students start testing for COVID-19.
“Were not doing this because we're worried about people getting infected from wastewater there isn't really evidence that you can get the disease from wastewater, but we're looking at fragments of the virus pieces, and not an infectious virus so it's a safe thing for us to do in the lab and people shouldn't worry that the wastewater or even treated water carries the virus, that's not the concern,” Keck said.
Once in the lab, the samples are mixed with magnetic beads, separating the waste particles from the particles in the virus. Scott Berry, another professor from the University says if the sample particles come back positive, the University can then pinpoint which residence hall or building there might be a positive case.
“First thing we do is we'll mix the wastewater with some magnetic beads and those will bind the biomarker that we're interested in. And then what we do is we using magnetics to capture the beads, while we wash away all the rest of the stuff,” Berry said.
The University plans to continue testing wastwater as an extra layer of protection through the spring semester.