Name: What Your Toilet Flush Reveals About Covid-19
Uploaded: 2020-05-08T18:35:07.000Z
Duration: 5 min 50 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

We've got blood tests, we've got nasal swabs,

all kinds of ways to detect the coronavirus,

And they've found that in a lot of cases,

than the more conventional test would show.

Would you two mind introducing yourselves,

I am co-founder and CEO of Biobot Analytics.

and I am co-founder and president at Biobot Analytics.

Your company, the two of you have come up

with a pretty unique way to look at the coronavirus.

coming from different parts of the country, right?

because people who are infected shed the virus in stool,

and it makes its way into the wastewater infrastructure.

Then wastewater treatment plants collect samples

Right now, Biobot has a pro bono campaign,

and we are testing about 10% of the US population

on a weekly basis, versus about 1% of the US population

that is being tested through the clinics.

from a large metropolitan region in Massachusetts.

And on the day that the samples were collected,

there were about 450 confirmed clinical cases

And what we were able to see via sewage testing

infected with coronavirus in that catchment area.

than what the regular tests were showing?

There's actually a large asymptomatic population, likely,

or individuals who have very mild symptoms.

However, they're captured and represented in sewage data,

And I know you get a 50-milliliter sample.

How is that representative of an entire city's population?

as it comes into the treatment plant constantly

through 24 hours to guarantee that we get representation

from every toilet flush that went through that community.

they are taking a small aliquot and sending that to us.

we measure how much virus was present in the wastewater

that looks for the genetic signature of the virus.

And you'd already had this company up and running

We originally were working with the opioid epidemic,

measuring the concentration of different types

so I've always been passionate about creating technologies

that help with equity and just bringing better resources

And the beauty of looking at wastewater as a diagnostic

is that everybody has a voice in the sewer.

You don't need to have the money to go to the doctor.

You don't need to have medical insurance.

As long as your house is connected to the wastewater,

and we can bring that to create better programming.

What's your vision for how this plays out

Yeah, our vision is that one day this technology

will be basic infrastructure for every city

So we will be constantly screening our populations

for new outbreaks of the novel coronavirus.

And in this next week, two weeks, three weeks,

there's just going to be more and more data

coming out, obviously, from the work you're doing.

All of the facilities that we're working with

really believe that weekly testing is very important.

One of the biggest questions facing government

and decision makers right now is how and when

Subtitles ListPlay Video

What Your Toilet Flush Reveals About Covid-19

constantly

individual

present

critical