Monitoring COVID Presence In Nantucket's Wastewater
To improve the accuracy of COVID monitoring on the island, the Town of Nantucket will move to a surveillance first approach, using the now well-established wastewater viral load testing. The results of the testing are more indicative of amount of COVID on island, given that they are testing all individuals using town sewage services, instead of only the people who make it to testing sites. Wastewater testing provides a good look at the total number of cases on island and has about a week of lead time from when most cases will appear as symptomatic. As a result, it provides the most robust indicator of the status of COVID on Nantucket. In the future, the wastewater testing will expand to track variants, thus further expanding the value of the testing program.