The best way to protect yourself from these germs is to also wash your hands—both before and after you use the restroom. That way, any microbes you may pick up from touching surfaces won’t be spread while you undress or use the bathroom. “People have no idea of the surfaces they touch before they go to the bathroom,” says Egan.
Scientists have developed ultra-sensitive ways to pick up traces of viruses like influenza, COVID, RSV, and more. They use a technology that amplifies tiny signals of pathogenic genes to determine whether certain diseases are rising in a sampled area.
Verily Health, an offshoot of Google X, began monitoring wastewater for infectious diseases during COVID in 2020, and now works with the CDC and others to provide up-to-date information on disease trends picked up in wastewater. For the World Cup, Georgetown University and MedStar Health created the Health Security Operations Center, the first non-government public-health emergency center to monitor for infectious diseases. Verily is contributing to the information the operations center is tracking to stay on top of infectious disease trends, by looking for about 30 infectious diseases in wastewater, including in cities where World Cup teams are training. (They are not currently looking for Ebola, but they can if it becomes necessary.) The wastewater monitoring “is public-health response on steroids,” says Dr. Vindell Washington, chief physician executive of Verily. When samples from local wastewater plants come in, they take about three days to fully analyze, he says, compared to the several weeks it might take for people to develop symptoms, get tested, and wait for the results.
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