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After its introduction in the fall 2020 semester, Syracuse University’s wastewater testing program continues to play a role in determining the level of COVID-19 transmission on campus.

Along with on-campus testing and wastewater surveillance data, test positivity in Onondaga County and contact tracing data help determine the masking status on campus, according to a campus-wide email from Mike Haynie, SU’s vice chancellor for strategic initiatives and innovation, on Oct. 21.

“The way the wastewater is used and compiled to making decision making, it gives an estimate of transmission that’s unbiased by testing behavior,” said David Larsen, an associate professor in SU’s Falk College and a member of the university’s Public Health Team. “As testing behavior changes, because of vaccines, there’s fewer symptoms if somebody is infected, or because people don’t want to go through isolation if they’re found. Then wastewater becomes more valuable in understanding transmission levels.”

Larsen said there are 15 different wastewater surveillance sites across campus. A team of four student testers — two SU graduate students, one SU undergraduate student and a student from SUNY-ESF — travel to the sites to collect samples.

Alex Godinez, a graduate student studying public health at SU, started working on the wastewater testing team last fall after being offered the opportunity as extra hours while working in SU’s on-campus saliva sample testing lab.

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Fall 2020 wastewater testing impact on SU dorm residents:

• SU won’t place dorms with coronavirus in wastewater on lockdown
• SU detects ‘weak virus signal’ in Sadler Hall, doesn’t close dorm
• SU closes Ernie Davis Hall, quarantines residents after COVID-19 possibly found
• SU to test wastewater in campus facilities for traces of coronavirus
• Here’s what you need to know about SU’s COVID-19 response strategy

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Godinez said the students visit each site twice a week. The team sets up the collection devices on Mondays and Thursdays and then collects the samples on Tuesdays and Fridays. The samples are then brought to Quadrant Biosciences, a lab at SUNY Upstate Medical University, for analysis.

“I enjoyed (working on the wastewater testing team) a little bit more than staying inside a lab because you got to be outside, walk around, do a little bit of manual labor,” Godinez said.

Godinez also said that he enjoys the added teamwork element of traveling to sites with a partner, which did not happen last year.

SU’s treatment of wastewater testing data has changed as well since last fall, Larsen said. After early quarantines of Ernie Davis Hall and Day Hall last September, the university shifted its policy from locking down dorms to advising testing for residents in residence halls where quantifiable levels of COVID-19 are detected in the wastewater.

Quantifiable levels of COVID-19 signify that there is a high enough level of COVID-19 in a residence hall’s wastewater to signify the presence of an active case, Larsen said, whereas unquantifiable levels suggest post infection viral shedding, which occurs when a COVID-19-infected person is no longer contagious but still releases bits of the virus.

He said that recent samples have come back with results indicating that there was either post infection viral shedding or that COVID-19 was not detected at all.

Larsen said he is now working with New York state to implement a similar system state-wide to help detect transmission of COVID-19 and future outbreaks. He said he believes COVID-19 wastewater surveillance data would help policymakers avoid a lack of data in their decision-making process.

“When we think about the early days of COVID, we really had an information gap where the metric we used in the early days was hospitalizations and deaths,” Larsen said. “The closer we get to understanding where transmission is not as well as where it is, then the safer and the more free we can remain.”

Published on November 8, 2021 at 10:23 pm

Contact Danny: ddamron@syr.edu | @dannyamron_