From Sewers To Classroom Surfaces One UM Prof & Researcher Looking For Sources Of COVID-19 On Campus

With students and faculty now back on the University of Michigan campus, one professor and researcher, Rick Neitzel, is developing methods to detect COVID-19 virus in the environment and on surfaces around the Ann Arbor campus.

WEMU's Lisa Barry talks with the professor to find out more.

With students and faculty now back on the University of Michigan campus, one professor and researcher, Rick Neitzel, is developing methods to detect the COVID-19 virus in the environment and on surfaces around the Ann Arbor campus.  He said, "We have an opportunity to go out and collect measurements of air, collect wipes of different surfaces, and actually sample sewage and look and see where we're finding the virus in the environment and try to connect that to people's risk of actually getting exposed."

Neitzel and several other researchers are looking in sewers, on campus busses and in University of Michigan classrooms, in hopes of figuring out if the virus is now present in the community or exactly where it might be coming from.

He says the date will help them better inform the University community as to where they are finding the virus where you might be more or less at risk of getting exposed.

U-M researchers look for coronavirus in campus environment, potential links to infection risks

ANN ARBOR—Studying samples from sewers, wiping down classrooms and buses, and taking measurements of air.  

Researchers at the University of Michigan School of Public Health are performing these tasks to determine how much coronavirus is present in the environment on campus, and whether that has any relationship on COVID-19 infection rates within the university community.

They hope this approach will provide an additional perspective from the work of other researchers, which has focused mostly on epidemiological approaches such as tracking infection rates.

"Our idea was, let's go out and actually sample around campus in the air, on surfaces and also in sewage, and see where—or if—we find the virus," said Rick Neitzel, U-M associate professor of environmental health sciences. 

"By making measurements before the start of the semester, and then continuing to sample the same locations over time as students, staff and faculty come back to campus, we can see how the amount of virus in the environment relates to infection rates.  The two must be related, but nobody has looked at this yet." 

The research team also includes professors Chuanwu Xi, Tim Dvonch and Alfred Franzblau, all of the U-M School of Public Health, and a few of their group members.  The university's Office of Environment Health & Safety provides assistance for sampling and logistics.

"While a few studies have monitored the SARS-CoV-2 virus on surfaces and aerosols in hospital rooms of COVID patients and other suspected sites with contamination, few reported studies have monitored the SARS-CoV-2 contamination in regular public spaces or elsewhere within communities," said Xi, an environmental microbiologist whose research focuses on microbes in the environment and human health. 

"As a result, there is a knowledge gap and information lacking about exposures in workplaces, education settings, transportation and residential settings, and a need to better understand predictors of exposure risk in such settings." 

The team's effort is to explore developing additional tools for early warning and early intervention. 

"We are working to develop a platform that can be applied to study and monitor other microbial pathogens in the environment during and prior to potential future pandemics," Xi said. 

Many efforts are ongoing around the world to explore the use of municipal wastewater testing for early warning and indicating the scale of an outbreak in a big community.

The researchers are quick to point out that due to what will likely be a low viral load, they may not be able to detect viral particles in the samples collected, and they might need to adjust their sampling strategies.  Also, the pilot program is not set up to provide virus viability and infectivity data. 

"You may have seen in the press people saying, 'Well, how much of a dose of this virus does it take to actually infect you?'  That's an open question that our study will not answer," Franzblau said.  "Also, our study will only be taking samples in public spaces on campus, not in individual offices, dorm rooms or other private locations on campus (e.g., bathrooms)."  

Dvonch said, however, that since "the U-M campus has many public venues that closely emulate those in the wider community, results of our study should provide exposure information generalizable to a variety of public, residential and educational settings."

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— Lisa Barry is the host of All Things Considered on WEMU. You can contact Lisa at 734.487.3363, on Twitter @LisaWEMU, or email her at lbarryma@emich.edu