WastewaterSCAN Monitoring Program

Sewage as Sentinel

Monitoring for COVID-19, Flu, RSV, and Other Diseases in Our Community

Researchers based at Stanford University partnered with communities in 2020 for a project called SCAN to monitor their wastewater for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Their work demonstrated that the concentration of SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater closely tracks with the number of cases in a community, which has been shown to be true for influenza, RSV, and other diseases. Through philanthropic funding, the effort has expanded nationally as WastewaterSCAN, offering more communities access to wastewater monitoring and support in interpreting the results.

For more information on the WastewaterSCAN program

  1. 2023 WastewaterScan_Fact Sheet_Jan2023

Expanding Nationally at No Cost to Communities

Communities across the United States can monitor their wastewater using the same reliable, sensitive, representative, and comparable method through WastewaterSCAN; it is free and simple to implement.

WastewaterSCAN aims to complement local and state pathogen surveillance systems by providing data from a national cohort of sites monitoring wastewater for infectious diseases. Results are reported to the CDC’s National Wastewater Surveillance System (NWSS) (when applicable) and on the WastewaterSCAN public website.