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Wastewater testing could help control COVID's spread. Why isn't it happening across America?

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Dr. Davida Smyth is an associate professor of microbiology at Texas A&M University-San Antonio. She has been analyzing wastewater for the presence of COVID-19 since early in the pandemic.
Jennifer Phillips
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TAMUSA
Dr. Davida Smyth is an associate professor of microbiology at Texas A&M University-San Antonio. She has been analyzing wastewater for the presence of COVID-19 since early in the pandemic.

COVID-19 testing clinics around the country are closing, and federal funding for free clinical testing is drying up. But wastewater surveillance could step in to play a crucial role in keeping track of where the virus is and just how much is really circulating out there.

In this episode, host Bonnie Petrie takes us to a wastewater treatment plant in Converse, Texas and talks to scientists trying to build a surveillance and sequencing program in South Texas.