SMART: How Sewage Could Reveal True Scale of Coronavirus Outbreak. “One treatment plant can capture wastewater from more than one million people, says Gertjan Medema, a microbiologist at KWR Water Research Institute in Nieuwegein, the Netherlands. Monitoring effluent at this scale could provide better estimates for how widespread the coronavirus is than testing, because wastewater surveillance can account for those who have not been tested and have only mild or no symptoms, says Medema, who has detected SARS-CoV-2 genetic material—viral RNA—in several treatment plants in the Netherlands. ‘Health authorities are only seeing the tip of the iceberg.’ . . . Studies have also shown that SARS-CoV-2 can appear in faeces within three days of infection, which is much sooner than the time taken for people to develop symptoms severe enough for them to seek hospital care—up to two weeks—and get an official diagnosis.”