SUNY Oneonta Experiments With Waste-Water COVID-19 Testing

SUNY Oneonta is taking a unique approach to test for the coronavirus – and it involves wastewater. According to AllOTSEGO, the college is exploring a theory that traces of COVID-19 can be found in wastewater five days before an individual shows signs of the virus. SUNY Oneonta will be testing for 24 hours, twice weekly, at three waste-water outflow points. If a COVID indication surfaces, quarantining and isolating would be initiated in that one-third of the campus. According to Lachlan Squair, SUNY Oneonta’s chief of facilities & safety, SUNY Oneonta is the first SUNY campus to adopt this technique, which grew out of a collaboration with Cornell, Syracuse University, Upstate Medical (Syracuse) and a company called Quadrant Biosciences (Syracuse).

That cutting edge technology will be used along with pooled saliva testing where saliva taken from 20 students (a "pool") is sent out for COVID-19 testing. It's a much more efficient way of testing more students and less expensive.