• Skip to main content
  • Skip to footer

Healthy Central Valley Together

Healthy Central Valley Together
  • EN
  • ES
  • About
  • Data

Healthy Central Valley Together

Wastewater Monitoring

To help prevent the spread of COVID-19, Healthy Central Valley Together tests wastewater from communities’ sewage treatment plants.

Learn more about wastewater monitoring

An important tool in preventing the spread of COVID-19 in California’s Central Valley.

Communities in Merced, Stanislaus, and Yolo counties are using wastewater, also known as sewage, to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

The virus that causes COVID-19 leaves markers in our wastewater. Everyone’s toilet flushes flow through sewer lines to the same place – a community’s wastewater treatment plant.

Each treatment plant collects samples that experts at UC Davis and UC Merced analyze for genetic markers of the virus that causes COVID-19.

UC Davis and the City of Davis started testing wastewater for the virus when the pandemic first began. That effort expanded into Healthy Central Valley Together, a collaborative project among public health departments, communities, and UC Davis and UC Merced that works to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

Read More

Methodology

Each wastewater treatment plant collects samples several times a week and sends them to Eurofins Pandemic Prevention Services’ lab in West Sacramento for analysis. The results get shared with county public health officials and will be displayed publicly, following the analytical and reporting model of the Sewer Coronavirus Alert Network.

Cities

Healthy Central Valley Together collects and tests wastewater from these cities:

  • Esparto
  • Davis
  • Los Banos
  • Merced
  • Modesto
  • Turlock
  • Winters
  • Woodland
View Data

2022 © Healthy Central Valley Together