OKLAHOMA ( KFOR ) – In mid-August, more than half the country sat at very high levels of COVID-19 detection in wastewater samples. Oklahoma was among them and it led to more positive tests as well.
“If the levels are high in the wastewater, that suggests that the virus is being transmitted through the population,” the Dean of the Hudson College of Public Health at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences.
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“We saw a big, big jump in the wastewater levels and we got up to a 23 percent positivity rate,” Bratzler said.
In mid-August, Oklahoma sat at a very high level of COVID-19 in wastewater detection samples along with 26 other states, according to the CDC.
Our state health department has it at high levels statewide, depending on which county you look at, where it can fluctuate between “very high” to “moderate levels. As Bratzler mentioned, that trend predicted a spike in test positivity where one in every four tests were coming back positive.