After all, wastewater contains saliva, urine, feces, shed skin, and more. You could consider it a rich biological sample. Wastewater analysis helped scientists understand how covid was spreading during the pandemic. It’s early days, but it is starting to help us get a handle on measles.
Globally, there has been some progress toward eliminating measles, largely thanks to vaccination efforts. Such efforts led to an 88% drop in measles deaths between 2000 and 2024, according to the World Health Organization. It estimates that “nearly 59 million lives have been saved by the measles vaccine” since 2000.
Still, an estimated 95,000 people died from measles in 2024 alone—most of them young children. And cases are surging in Europe, Southeast Asia, and the Eastern Mediterranean region.
Last year, the US saw the highest levels of measles in decades. The country is on track to lose its measles elimination status—a sorry fate that met Canada in November after the country recorded over 5,000 cases in a little over a year.
Public health efforts to contain the spread of measles—which is incredibly contagious—typically involve clinical monitoring in health-care settings, along with vaccination campaigns. But scientists have started looking to wastewater, too.