Three weeks ago, Marist implemented a wastewater COVID-19 testing system on the East side of campus as a surveillance tool for identifying positive cases. The school has set up wastewater samplers for the Fulton and West Cedar townhouses that samples regularly over a period of 24-hours which can then be used to detect positive COVID-19 cases.

“When people are infected with COVID-19 and even for months after, they actually shed viral RNA for some time which is actually the same molecule that is used in testing to see whether someone is positive or not,” Dean of the School of Science Dr. Alicia Slater said.

Wastewater testing has been used for a long time by municipalities to monitor disease outbreaks. Marist was able to connect with a group at Clarkson University about a partnership for wastewater system testing. The group at Clarkson University, led by Dr. Shane Rogers, is working with several institutions to sample their wastewater.

“What you do is you set up a sampler that can collect a compost sample,” Slater said. “This means that it samples many times over a 24-hour period because we are trying to see what is going on in a residence hall area. We collect those samples on Tuesday and Thursday through auto-samplers that are set up on the manhole covers so every 15 minutes, the sample gets pulled up into the composite sample.”

There is a group of students in the school of science who are being supervised by Dr. Zion Klos and Dr. Raymond Kepner handling the samples. Once the sample is run for 24-hours, the students pull the sample in a bucket and put a new bucket in. After students take the bucket back to the lab, they put it into bottles and then ship those bottles off to Clarkson University who runs the analysis for Marist.

“Wastewater sampling has been used for a long time because it’s an easy way to sample large numbers of people,” Slater said. “We have it at four locations here at campus, it’s at Lower and Upper Fulton and Lower and Upper West Cedar. That is because the family units over there are fairly large and it’s also because their sewage outflows are conducive to telling us something about a single building.”

The freshman dorms across campus are not conducive to wastewater sampling because Champagnat, Midrise and Marian’s sewage systems all flow through the Student Center which means a particular dorm can’t be singled out for positive cases. It was easiest for the college to implement the wastewater testing system on the East side of campus because of its proximity to the water treatment plant.

“Right now, it’s complicated for us because we are having a surge on campus,” Slater said. “People who are prior positives also shed the virus so we have people who were isolated with COVID-19 and now we have seen the viral load go up. We can’t tell whether the rise in cases is because of those prior positives moving back into the dorm or whether it is new active cases.”

The wastewater system testing is a complementary tool used in conjunction with surveillance testing and surge testing on campus. There is almost a week between the time Marist sends the sample to Clarkson and the time that the results come back to the college. Big increases in the sample show the college that there are new cases because people who are actively infected with COVID-19 shed more virus than those who were previously infected.

“In non-surge times, it would be a great early indicator of when we might have a single case and that is how we had hoped to use it,” Slater said. “We are doing more regular surveillance now and we are also doing surge testing if needed. Many places have been working with Clarkson for longer than we have, so we are still trying to find our footing for what the wastewater testing will look like.”

Marist Implements Wastewater COVID-19 Testing

MARIST CIRCLE