NJIT Finds Coronavirus In Sewage As Entire Dorm Quarantined – Newark, NJ Patch

NEWARK, NJ — A college in New Jersey recently quarantined hundreds of students after finding traces of the coronavirus in their fecal matter.

Since reopening its campus earlier this month, New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) in Newark has been running weekly tests on wastewater samples from each of its occupied dorm buildings.

On Sept. 16, NJIT learned that sewage from one of its dorms, Cypress Hall, tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. About 300 students living in the building were immediately quarantined.

The students were each given a coronavirus test the following day, NJIT administrators said. Anyone who tests positive will be isolated and contact-traced.

University officials “strongly encouraged” the affected students to remain at Cypress Hall and quarantine there, although they’re free to leave and return home. However, if they do, no student will be allowed back on campus until they provide NJIT with a negative COVID-19 test result.

All students are continuing their coursework remotely in the meanwhile, officials said.

A university spokesperson provided Patch with an update on the test results Monday:

“NJIT conducted 266 individual COVID-19 swab tests on Cypress Hall residents on Thursday. No cases of COVID-19 have been discovered in the 263 results received by the university thus far. Three students required re-testing due to their original test samples leaking, and we are awaiting results from 23 students who went home to quarantine and to complete their required testing. Those students chose not to quarantine in residence, as we directed, and will not be permitted on campus until a negative test result is provided to NJIT. Our most important priority is the health and wellness of our campus community, and we remain confident in the safety of our facilities for our students, faculty, and staff.”

NJIT administrators said they hope the tests can be a powerful early warning tool that add yet another weapon to their virus-fighting arsenal.

“Our expectation always has been that some NJIT community members will test positive for COVID-19, so the goal of our testing program is to identify and isolate those who may be asymptomatic, as early as possible, thereby reducing the chance of exposure to others on campus,” said Andrew Christ, a senior vice president at the university.

Since March, there have nine total cases of the virus at NJIT, with four of those cases “recovered,” according to the university’s website. There are about 11,300 students currently enrolled at the college.

TESTING SEWAGE FOR THE CORONAVIRUS

Here’s how the sewage testing is being done at NJIT, officials say:

“Wastewater sampling will be conducted using a GLS sampler and pump equipped with a suction tube and strainer placed into the wastewater effluent stream exiting each dormitory building. Some sampling points are located inside the building at accessible building clean out traps, while other sampling points are located outside the building at municipal sewer access points, depending on building configuration … Once sampling is complete, wastewater samples are shipped to an independent laboratory for analysis. Samples are analyzed via a polymerase chain reaction method. For wastewater sampling, the log of the concentration of RNA per liter in a sample is a linear relationship with the number of cases in the community. In order to establish a target threshold of what constitutes a positive sample, NJIT conducted preliminary sampling to establish baseline criteria. All preliminary sampling has returned non-detectible results. Therefore, similar to the air sampling and surface sampling protocols, a cycle threshold score of less than 40 is considered positive.”

While it may sound unusual, health experts have been using fecal waste to keep tabs on infectious pathogens for decades. For example, sewage testing has successfully been used to detect diseases such as polio.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the virus that causes COVID-19 has been found in the feces of some patients.

“However, it is unclear whether the virus found in feces may be capable of causing COVID-19,” the CDC states.

Other U.S. colleges, including the University of California, San Diego, and the University of Minnesota, have also been testing sewage on campus to track down the virus.

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