GORHAM, Maine — The University of Southern Maine (USM) moved to remote learning Friday after a detectable level of COVID-19 was found in the wastewater of the Gorham campus.
"We want to take it seriously. We want to do the proper protocols and call for safety over the course of the weekend," USM President Glenn Cummings said.
Cummings said the college has two known positive cases of coronavirus.
"What this indicates is that somebody in those dormitories has COVID, so we are now going to have to determine how many and move them into isolation," Cummings said.
The University of Maine System started testing the wastewater for the virus in August.
"We are able to get surveillance information that would be an indicator when we might need to double down on a variety of different things including testing or cleaning," UMaine President Joan Ferrini-Mundry said.
"Wastewater sampling can often predict by seven days or so an uptick in the proportion of the population that with SARS-CoV-2," Robert Wheeler, Associate Professor of Microbiology at UMaine, said.
Wheeler said the results of the tests are analyzed in his classes.
"Putting a tube down into the sewer and pulling out a hundred milliliters of water every 15 minutes. And then you mix it all together after 24-hours and you take out a couple hundred milliliters," Wheeler said.
Meanwhile, Cummings said the USM campus will continue to test the wastewater over the weekend and plans on classes being back in session on Monday.
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