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Wastewater surveillance program sheds testing sites
Sewage analysis has been in the spotlight recently as experts warn of an ongoing summer Covid surge. But now a key wastewater research group that has partnered with Verily to study samples from facilities across the country is downsizing due to “resource constraints,” my colleague Timmy Broderick reported exclusively late last week.
WastewaterSCAN, a private group based at Stanford University in partnership with Emory University, has stopped gathering data from 43 wastewater facilities, according to emails reviewed by Timmy. The research outfit previously analyzed wastewater samples from almost 200 sites that covered about 39 million people; after downsizing, it’ll still publish data from about 150 of those. WastewaterSCAN was founded in 2020 and is backed by the Sergey Brin Family Foundation and Bloomberg Philanthropies. Verily, which processes samples for WastewaterSCAN, scored a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention surveillance contract late last year.
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