COLORADO, USA — While we're all used to getting clues about how and where COVID-19 is spreading through things like testing, the state has another useful tool - our toilets. 

The COVID situation here in Colorado is one of the worst in the country right now. We know cases, hospitalizations and the positivity rate are all going up. Now, epidemiologists are also finding more COVID in wastewater.

"We’re seeing our wastewater surveillance mirror what we’re seeing in our human illness," said Rachel Jervis, an Epidemiologist with the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE). "When someone has COVID, we’ve found that just under 50% of people with COVID shed COVID in their stool regardless of whether or not they have symptoms."