Sentinel alert system and waste water

Integration of high-precision laboratory data and computational modeling to inform quantitative microbial risk assessments of pathogen transmission under various conditions within indoor environments.

Non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) such as social distancing guidelines and mask requirements have been adopted and implemented relatively widely across the U.S., individual states, counties, and municipalities. To date, these policy decisions have been made with limited empirical evidence about how loosening and lifting NPIs might affect disease spread or the likelihood of resurgence. Existing efforts to track NPIs focus on a relatively small set of interventions or have been limited to state-level measures, overlooking county and city-level NPIs. As a result, epidemiologists are unable to evaluate how particular NPI combinations affect disease spread, and policy makers remain in the dark about how to ease restrictions without prompting disease resurgence.

The virus that causes COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2, is presenting an unprecedented challenge to public health containment measures due to both airborne transmission and late detection of the virus. New detection systems are necessary to ensure timeliness of surveillance and actionability of public health measures to prevent community spread of the virus.