COVID-19: Wastewater Surveillance
Communities can track the presence of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, in wastewater samples. These data can provide an early warning of COVID-19's spread in communities. For more information, visit the Wastewater Surveillance System page.
Monitoring Wastewater Surveillance Data
Wastewater surveillance for COVID-19 is a rapidly developing field. State, tribal, local, and territorial health departments participating in the National Wastewater Surveillance System (NWSS) submit testing data to CDC. CDC then standardizes and interprets these data and presents them in the COVID Data Tracker. How often sites collect wastewater samples and how frequently data are reported to CDC varies by health department.
Wastewater data are meant to be used with other COVID-19 surveillance data to better understand COVID-19's spread in a community. Learn more about wastewater data by exploring each of the charts and maps. To see a map of which SARS-CoV-2 variant is the most dominant at each wastewater sampling site, see CDC COVID Data Tracker: Summary of Variant Surveillance.
