Wastewater Testing Effective At Detecting Mpox, Study Finds

The AP (1/18, Stobbe) reports, “Wastewater testing does a good job at detecting mpox infections, U.S. health officials said in a report Thursday that bolsters a push to use sewage to track more diseases.” CDC researchers “found that over the course of a week, there was a 32% likelihood the tests would detect the presence of at least one person infected with mpox in a population ranging from thousands to millions.” Notably, “the chance that the tests could detect infections rose as more people were infected.” The findings were published in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. Healio (1/18, Feller) reports researchers “said mpox detection in wastewater, combined with clinical cases, can help guide the public health response – and the absence of mpox in wastewater can also confirm that there is not a large outbreak.”