Evidence is growing that monkeypox, like COVID-19, can be reliably detected in wastewater.
Yet the U.S. has moved far too slowly to include the virus in its regular scans of sewage for coronavirus. By the time the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention launches a program in the next month or two to look for monkeypox, the worst of the outbreak is likely to have passed.
When someone is infected with a virus, they "shed” it in various ways — feces, urine, saliva, semen, or, if there is a rash involved as with monkeypox, through skin that is sloughed off in the shower. All of it goes down the drain, and with it, evidence of the level of infections in a community.