UofL researchers already are testing wastewater to determine whether coronavirus infection exists in different neighborhoods around Jefferson County. This new work goes one step further, with the goal of estimating how many people within those neighborhoods are infected. If virus levels are high in the wastewater, it may be a signal of widespread infection in the community.

“This could revolutionize the way we track and contain pandemics, and not just COVID-19,” said Aruni Bhatnagar, professor of medicine. “It gives us an invaluable tool that could offer a clearer view of where and how the virus spreads.”

Researchers at UofL’s , where Bhatnagar is director, began testing wastewater last year as part of the Co-Immunity Project, a groundbreaking partnership with the to track COVID-19 in Metro Louisville.

As part of that effort, the from 12 sites representing multiple neighborhoods and five water quality treatment centers that aggregate the entire county to the UofL Center for Predictive Medicine for virus analysis.

In this new work, MSD and other community partners will continue collecting wastewater samples over the next six months. After analysis, UofL will also send the results to the CDC’s National Wastewater Surveillance System, which will help inform efforts across the U.S.

As with previous rounds of COVID-19 testing conducted through the Co-Immunity Project, researchers will recruit participants by sending letters to selected households across Jefferson County. They hope to continue to enroll a few thousand people every month and will compare their COVID-19 infection and antibody results with wastewater samples from the same area, with the goal of finding how they correlate.

“The aim of the project is to figure out whether we can estimate how many people in a given area are infected by simply testing the community wastewater,” said Ted Smith, associate professor of medicine and a lead on the wastewater epidemiology project. “Additionally, this is a passive and comparatively low-cost way to monitor community infection and has the additional benefit of being inclusive of all communities in our city and is a promising step to ensuring public health equity.”

Since the beginning of the pandemic, the Co-Immunity Project has conducted ongoing testing and surveys to better understand the spread of the coronavirus and COVID-19. In the past year, UofL researchers have tested more than 12,000 people for COVID-19 infection and antibodies, beginning with frontline health care workers. They also have worked to gauge how local citizens feel about COVID-19 vaccines, with in a recent poll saying they would like to be vaccinated.

“This is critically important work in our fight against COVID-19,” said Kevin Gardner, UofL’s executive vice president for research and innovation. “Our hope is that by working with the CDC, we can develop these new, more efficient tools for tracking pandemics and take a big step in advancing health for all of our community.”

Last year, U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY), then-Senate majority leader, negotiated and championed five historic and completely bipartisan COVID-19 rescue packages. In addition to supporting workers and propping up the economy, these relief bills also allocated for COVID-19 testing. McConnell personally called then-U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex Azar to request that the CDC direct a portion of that funding to UofL’s Co-Immunity Project.

“Our country has responded to this terrible pandemic with innovation and discovery and Kentucky continues to play a major role in beating this virus. I’d like to congratulate Dr. Bhatnagar and UofL’s entire Co-Immunity Project on their groundbreaking study,” McConnell said in a statement. “After hearing about their work, I took this project to the highest levels of the federal government to help accelerate their research with additional federal funding.��As UPS and other Louisville employers are sending safe and effective vaccinations around the country, I’m proud top researchers right here at UofL are pushing the boundaries of knowledge in detection and prevention.”

The students, led by junior applied geography (environmental analysis track) major and Grawemeyer Scholar Sam Kessler, invented the tool during a service project with Metropolitan Sewer District, Bernheim Forest and The Nature Conservancy. They volunteered to help monitor, clean up and restore streams in Louisville, including testing them for E.coli bacteria, which is found in biological waste and can sometimes cause disease.��

But, the team would have to consistently travel to each site — 10 sites across three different watersheds — at least five times per month to keep pace with the minimum testing required by the Environmental Protection Agency and Kentucky Department for Environmental Protection.

“With our class schedules, going to each of those sites multiple times per month wasn’t going to work for very long,” Kessler said. “We were traveling to some of these sites four times per week in between classes – Beargrass Creek, Bernheim Forest and all over. We needed something more efficient.”

To solve that problem, Kessler said, they invented a now patent-pending tool made from PVC pipe containing a special type of sediment material in mesh bags that can be left in the stream and read just once per month. Kessler believes their tool could dramatically improve the time and cost efficiency of testing.

“This is set-and-forget. You can leave it in the stream or river all month and test once instead of making at least five different trips,” he said. “And, because it’s in the stream all month instead of the isolated tests we currently do, you get more insightful results from a cumulative sample. This research could significantly improve the way we sample water for E.coli.”

Current testing only measures the levels of E.coli at the time of the test, not the days in between tests, Kessler said. For example, if a test on Monday shows no E.coli, the tester would have no way of knowing the stream was polluted the next day. Because the students’ tool can be left in the water all month, he said the result is a more comprehensive, cumulative sample.

“Understanding what makes safe, clean waterways is complex,” said Erin Wagoner, Environmental Partnerships Liaison for Louisville MSD. “From all the ways that land draining to a stream is used, to the chemical composition of the water in the stream, making these connections to improve the health of our waterways is a challenge. Creating a plan and developing a tool to make this process more efficient removes barriers to diagnosing the problems we are all trying to solve.”

While the tool has been tested only with E.coli so far, Kessler sees other potential applications. For example, he is interested in investigating whether it could be used to screen for SARS-CoV-2 by placing the device in wastewater.

“During COVID-19 specifically, limiting the amount of time human personnel are testing in the field is a smart thing to do,” Kessler said. “Maybe this could help.”

The master’s student was outside in the summer heat, filling 500-gallon tanks with potable reclaimed water at the Metropolitan Sewer District’s Floyds Fork Water Quality Treatment Center. The four tanks were heading to four Louisville craft breweries, where the water would be used in some new brews as part of a pilot project.

Shipman, 22, knew better than just about anyone that it was ready to drink. So on that hot July day, he took a couple of gulps.

“And I’m still standing here,” he laughed.

Shipman is one of 20 University of Louisville Speed School students who had a part in the water pilot project, which has been named Next Round Brewing (motto: “Good as New, Great for Brew”). He is using the project for his master’s thesis.

Next Round is a joint effort among UofL, MSD, Louisville Water Co., the breweries, the Kentucky-Tennessee Water Environment Association, the Kentucky-Tennessee section of American Water Works Association and Isopure Corp., the world’s leading manufacturer of FDA-registered equipment for dialysis water treatment, which built the purifier. The goal was to find a way to turn something no one would consider drinking into something everyone would want to drink.

Milad Ebrahimi, a Speed School doctoral graduate who works as an MSD regulatory compliance analyst, had the idea about a year ago. He proposed a capstone project for seniors in the chemical engineering department: What are the best ways to remove enough contaminants from treated wastewater to make it drinkable? 

Five teams of four students each took on different challenges for the small-scale wastewater treatment system, including experimenting with chemicals and filters, adding copper ions and water softeners and zapping the water with UV light. Ebrahimi and his team took the best ideas from each student group and incorporated it into Next Round’s water purification system.��

“They all did a great job,” he said.

The team tested the water, tweaked the system, then tested it again, then tweaked it again. This happened over and over and over and over until, by July, lab tests showed the water met the standards for drinking water. It’s the first time this has been successfully done in Kentucky and Tennessee, Ebrahimi said.

“This process is not fast,” Shipman said. “But quality and safety is not to be rushed.”

An informational video about Next Round emphasizes that the amount of water on Earth is finite, and parts of the world are already struggling with the demand for clean drinking water.��

“Inspiring and promoting dialogue about diversifying our nation’s water portfolio is an important part of a national water strategy,” Ebrahimi wrote in an article describing the project.��

The four breweries — Gordon Biersch, Holsopple Brewing, Akasha Brewing and Apocalypse Brew — will serve their beer Aug. 18 at Louisville’s Waterfront Park during the celebration of water event sponsored by the Water Professionals Conference.��

“The source isn’t really quite as important as what comes out,” said Nick Landers of Gordon Biersch.��

Read about the breweries in this WFPL .��

Check out more about this project here: