If a new subvariant were to have created a new Covid-19 outbreak, it probably would have shown up by now in the wastewater — and it hasn’t, according to the man who checks.
That man is Yale environmental engineering professor Jordan Peccia. He leads the team that during the pandemic has been conducting weekly analysis of New Haven-area wastewater — the most reliable early-warning measure of the coronavirus’s trajectory. More reliable than official case numbers or positive-test percentages.
The team has been looking for signs for a new surge of Covid-19 cases forecast based on the emergence a new subvariant of the Omicron variant.
Instead, the team’s latest weekly sample, through April 4, continued to show readings in the range of 5,000 to 6,000 copies of SARS CoV‑2 per milileter of wastewater. The readings have been at that level for weeks, reflecting a slight uptick of cases from a bottoming-out of 2,000.
That’s compared to the 247,000 copies per milileter detected at the peak of the Omicron-driven surge that slammed New Haven in January, then vanished nearly as quickly.
The new readings show that there’s still a “low rumble” of cases, Peccia said. It shows that Covid-19 is still with us. And nobody can predict what’ll happen in the future, he noted.
But for now, the fact that the subvariant “has been around for so long and has not taken off makes me quite optimistic,” Peccia said.
Nora Grace-Flood File Photo
Jordan Peccia on a Cody's Diner run after picking up wastewater samples on the East Shore.
