Macomb Today

Macomb County is “on the leading edge” in some of the latest measures for addressing the COVID-19 pandemic, including a method for testing wastewater for evidence of the coronavirus in the population, according to Candice Miller, the current Macomb County Public Works commissioner.

Miller recently appeared on WJR’s "The Paul W. Smith Show" regarding the new testing procedures.

"We have a pilot program that we just started in the Township of Clinton,” she told Smith. Seven separate sites will be tested twice each week, with the expectation that they will be able to use the results from positive tests for viral material in human feces to determine whether, and to what degree, the virus is present in the local population.

"Plus, we think we can be ahead of it, sort of a precursor,” she told Smith. “In other words, where you'd be able to see it about two weeks before people -- they’re already shedding the virus, before they would present with symptoms.”

Miller said Public Works would hand off the information collected to the County Health Department to assist them in their contact-tracing efforts.

"I see the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) now is wanting to do this nationwide and in the state of Michigan as well,” Miller told Smith. “So we’re well ahead of all of that.”

Smith questioned what usable information can be derived from knowing the virus is present in feces from the community.

Miller said she thinks that tracing the virus in feces could assist the health department in narrowing down outbreaks by neighborhoods if they were to take samples from specific sections within the sewer system.

"It starts to really pinpoint where some of this is,” Miller said on the radio program.

The state has even considered patterning its own efforts after the program that Macomb County has developed.