mmatus

Lots of good points here! Viral loads and variants are important to keep in mind when interpreting wastewater data. That said, our current best guess is that the rising SARS-CoV-2 concentration in Boston wastewater reflects a real increase in cases. Delta has higher nasal shedding than other variants, but not necessarily higher fecal shedding--the ratio of wastewater concentrations to clinical cases seems pretty constant in our data over time (see our blog post on this topic here: https://biobotanalytics.medium.com/mass-vaccination-delta-an...) We know much less about omicron, but it's probably still only a small minority of cases. We're currently sequencing samples of Boston wastewater, so we'll know more about omicron levels in wastewater very soon!

You can see our data overlaid with clinical testing data here: https://biobot.io/data/

And yes! Our testing represents every individual in the community that has used a toilet connected to a sewer, independent of where they live, whether they experience symptoms, or whether they have the time, money or access to clinical testing. It's helped public officials stay informed and make decisions even with limited or inconsistent individual testing data.

Hi everyone, I’m the CEO of Biobot. I’m a computational biologist, passionate about leveraging wastewater data and analytics to improve human health. I’d be happy to answer any questions you have about the COVID-19 data that we’re generating at MWRA, what we’re up to at Biobot, or wastewater epidemiology generally.