Carol Wilusz said wastewater has been key in demonstrating that the virus was infecting people in early hot spots much earlier than the first cases showed up at hospitals. "The virus has been circulating a long time before we knew about it," Wilusz said, "and the evidence is all in the wastewater."
8:30 a.m. Monday, Aug. 3: Brian Foy, PhD, and Tony Schountz, PhD, Professors in the CSU Department of Microbiology, Immunology, and Pathology at Colorado State University will discuss the science behind animal-to-human transmission and how COVID-19 has played out thus far, followed by a live Q&A session.
“We’re seeing heroic efforts at CSU," said Polis. He’s ordering the ramping up of state testing facilities, including at the University of Colorado and Colorado State University, to address the growing backlog of cases at the national testing labs and the state’s need for faster test results.
Carol Wilusz, the molecular biologist who will be leading the sewage testing at CSU, said results should be extracted from the sewage and available within 48 hours of the sample collection.
VIDEO: In an effort to expedite the return of coronavirus testing results, Colorado State University researchers in Fort Collins have developed a product which would mimic the convenience of a take-home pregnancy test.
Researchers at CSU are moving forward with work on a device could provide portable, accurate and inexpensive tests. We discuss the project with CSU's Dr. Brian Geiss.
Volunteers in the Department of Microbiology, Immunology, and Pathology sewed over 1,000 face masks for employees to wear at work during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“What we saw is within facilities a lot of the same sequence, whereas within different facilities, they had a different sequence. It does look like, with the data we have so far, that they really are clustering within the same facility.” -Nicole Sexton, Ebel Lab postdoctoral fellow
The state is providing $4.2 million to Colorado State University to pay for testing kits and the costs of processing them. CSU will test about 30 small to medium-sized facilities, while the state will handle the other homes, said Dr. Nicole Ehrhart, director of the university’s Columbine Health Systems Center for Healthy Aging.
Mathiason has an amazing talent for creating communities to work together for a common goal. For example, she has an interest in bringing other voices to scientific communication and leadership.