2023 COVID-19 Wastewater Tracing Results

Fox Metro has been wastewater-based technology in our sewage system to anonymously track the spread of COVID-19 in our community.  The wastewater holds a wealth of public health data that can inform better decisions on how we as a society combat COVID-19.  Infected individuals shed the virus in stool approximately 7 days prior to testing positive.  Asymptomatic and mild cases can also be captured using this data.

We have been collecting data from the Boulder Hill Interceptor as a baseline residential area since late May 2020.  This study aims to create an early warning system that can alert us to emerging outbreaks and get a much better vantage point, supported by real-time data, into the prevalence of COVID-19 in our community.

Below is a graph with all of our 2023 results.  As what has become our new “usual”, we traced an autumn spike in the viral concentration.  Thank goodness that this year’s results were much less than the all-time high that was observed in late 2022-early 2023 with the Omicron-variant.  We have also started to track influenza A, influenza B, and RSV and will post those results as trends develop over time.