So far, the monitoring program, which has been operating since since March 25, shows only four snapshots in time during the peak of South Florida’s first pandemic wave, since samples have only been taken four times. But the highest readings, measured on April 9, show that up to 2% of the county’s almost 2.3 million wastewater customers, or about 46,000 people, may have had the disease.
That percentage ”is substantially more than cases being reported in terms of individual testing,” says Doug Yoder, deputy director of the Miami-Dade Water and Sewer Department.
The 2% estimate is almost four times higher than the nearly 12,000 documented infections in the county, but below those predicted by Miami-Dade’s second round of antibody testing.