South Korea to test sewage samples for COVID-19

Many major US Cities have been doing this for a while now.

LTC Eugene Chu
..."South Korea's current system is still aimed at tracking every COVID-19 case by requiring hospitals to report all positive tests, an approach Lee described as expensive and laborious. He said health officials are considering an eventual switch to “sample-based surveillance,” like they do with influenza monitoring, where only a certain number of designated hospitals register their cases.

“When that (transition) comes, we believe wastewater surveillance will function as a very effective tool” for providing complementary information on virus trends, Lee said during a briefing. “Another strength is that we can monitor various pathogens other than COVID-19.”

While coronaviruses causing COVID-19 don’t likely survive in water for long, Lee said the country’s genetic testing methods would also be able to detect fragments of dead viruses."