Every Thursday morning, before most of campus is awake, University of Nebraska–Lincoln engineer Shannon Bartelt-Hunt and a small team of graduate students and building systems personnel can be found at various campus sites, lifting manhole covers and collecting sewage samples.
They’re on the hunt for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.
After collection, the samples are processed by separating the solid material from the wastewater. The virus is extracted from the solids and then analyzed by a method called reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction — or RT-PCR — similar to how individual swab tests are run. Bartelt-Hunt is collaborating with public health and infectious disease researchers at the University of Nebraska Medical Center on the analysis.
