Coronavirus on a steep decline in Palm Springs, wastewater samples show

Covid-19 is flowing through the pipes.

Before someone shows symptoms or even gets a test, the virus is first showing up in what you flush down the toilet.

The Palm Springs Wastewater Treatment Plant has been tracking how much virus is in the water and right now, it's way down.

"We're as low as we've ever seen," said Palm Springs Assistant City Manager Marcus Fuller. He said tracking Covid in the wastewater paints a more complete picture of how many people are sick in the community, regardless of whether they get tested.

"When you have Covid, like anything else when you're sick, you're passing that through your body, into the toilet and into the treatment plant," Fuller said.

The city has been testing for Covid in the sewage since August. "We watched the curve go up," Fuller said.

Around Christmas, it reached 2.6 million Covid copies per liter, which is estimated to equal 5,000 positive coronavirus cases. That's much higher than what the testing showed at the time.

But now, it's down to only 83 cases.

As for the more contagious variants of coronavirus, they're virtually not present in the wastewater in Palm Springs. Only one sample turned up a minute amount of a variant, and the last sample came up clean.

The last time Covid levels were this low in the wastewater, Riverside County was in the red tier. That's got city officials hopeful.

"It's good news," Fuller said. "We fully think and hope that we'll be able to go back into the red tier and even further, as long as the trend continues."

The city says it will continue to track wastewater Covid levels because of it's effectiveness at indicating how much of the virus is in the community. If it starts to rise, it could give early warning to a new surge in cases.