Sewage sampling robots speed SARS-CoV-2 detection

“With their process they can do a hundred [samples] in a day and without a lot of human effort,” explains microbiologist Katrine Whiteson, [associate professor], of the University of California, Irvine, who tests wastewater for SARS-CoV-2 but was not involved in the technique’s development. Before this, the number of samples it was possible to process by filtration—a method she also uses—was “ten a day tops,” she says, so this automated system is an “enormous contribution” to the field.