Should we be testing wastewater for measles, too?

Testing wastewater for signs of viral or bacterial disease has become pretty routine, one of the good things to come out of the pandemic. With measles making a comeback – is there no end to the damage Andrew Wakefield’s fraud is doing to us? – maybe we should add that disease to the things we check for.

So argues MIT in this article:

“I actually think you could make the argument that measles is even more important to [detect] than covid or influenza or any of the other pathogens that we’re looking for,” says Samuel Scarpino, an epidemiologist at Northeastern University in Boston.

Although measles is a respiratory virus, people shed it in their urine. They also brush their teeth and spit in the sink. They blow their noses and throw the tissue in the toilet.

The article mentions the possible difficulties because of the way measles proceeds.