The Biology and the Built Environment Center (BioBE) is currently seeking a post-doc to investigate fundamental questions surrounding the role of microorganisms (bacteria, viruses, fungi archaea, and protists) in the built environment and in relation to human health outcomes. Learn more and apply here. (https://careers.uoregon.edu/en-us/job/527294/post-doctoral-scholar-in-microbial-ecology)
About a month ago I posted a request for information about guidance for school reopening. See the post here: https://microbe.net/2021/02/06/compiling-information-about-covid19-transmission-masks-filtration-schools-etc/ I spent a while looking at the responses and also soliciting some more and ended up with a few really good documents / sites with information about school reopening. These are Schools for Health. From …
UPDATE March 24, 2021. Wrote a summary post here: https://microbe.net/2021/03/24/compilation-of-guidance-from-a-few-sources-on-school-reopening/ Trying to collect some of the various information about COVID19 transmission and related topics including masks, schools, CO2, variants, etc. Mostly from Twitter threads and News articles Masks Wall Street Journal: Double Face Masks? N95? Protect Yourself Against New Covid-19 Variants With These Mask …
I am compiling some materials on science driven guidelines for how to decide if and how to keep open and/or reopen schools in the face of COVID19. Here are some I have compiled that I seem to be useful. I would love other examples. (Updated 12/21 at 3 PM) National Academy of Sciences Reopening K-12 …
This one has been getting a lot of popular media attention… and really the title says it all “Evidence of Long-Distance Droplet Transmission of SARS-CoV-2 by Direct Air Flow in a Restaurant in Korea”. This study describes a transmission that took place at over 20 feet in only 5 minutes… both problematic considering the standard …
More wastewater sampling work, “Wastewater Analysis of SARS-CoV-2 as a Predictive Metric of Positivity Rate for a Major Metropolis“. This one is a larger-scale study in a big city that found wastewater spikes in SARS-CoV-2 to present clinical positives by 2 weeks which is a huge lead time and of major significance for getting a …
A nice article by several of our colleagues from the MoBE project days. “Distribution of SARS-CoV-2 RNA Signal in a Home with COVID-19 Positive Occupants” does just what it says in the tile, looks at the signal from SARS-CoV-2 in a home… long after the occupants were determined positive. They sampled two months after the …
This is a bit more up our alley! “The wastewater microbiome: A novel insight for COVID-19 surveillance” doesn’t look directly at the virus but at the changes in the wastewater microbiome that might proceed detection of SARS-CoV-2. The authors claim to observe such changes which could potentially be really useful. We already know that wastewater …
A break from wastewater articles! “Longitudinal monitoring of SARS-CoV-2 RNA on high-touch surfaces in a community setting“. There’s not actually been a ton of articles about fomites recently… this appears less and less likely to be a source of transmission for SARS-CoV-2 although we certainly wouldn’t want to rule it out. It is, after all, …
Getting harder to keep up with all the wastewater articles related to SARS-CoV-2. It’s becoming more and more common as a method of environmental surveillance for the virus. And yes, this article, Tracking SARS-CoV-2 RNA through the wastewater treatment process, came out a month ago… I’ve been too busy working on the pandemic to blog …