The University of Arizona prevented a potential coronavirus outbreak at a dorm on campus after using wastewater testing.
The university has been testing the wastewater for traces of coronavirus after roughly 5,000 students moved back onto campus, according to an article published Friday by the Washington Post.
After coronavirus was detected, 311 students were tested and two came back positive, but asymptomatic. The students were immediately quarantined, the outlet reported.
“With this early detection, we jumped on it right away, tested those youngsters, and got them the appropriate isolation where they needed to be,” former U.S. Surgeon General Richard Carmona said in a press conference.
Carmona has been leading the reopening of the college campus.
The former U.S. surgeon general claimed without the wastewater testing, many more students could have contracted the virus. (RELATED: More Than 20,000 Coronavirus Cases Have Been Counted At Colleges Since Late July: Report)
“You think about if we had missed it, if we had waited until they became symptomatic and they stayed in that dorm for days, or a week, or the whole incubation period, how many other people would have been infected?” he said.
The University of Arizona reopened the campus for a mix of online and in-person instruction on Aug. 24. The university chose to use wastewater testing at all 20 campus dorms, the Washington Post reported.
