Bearer of good news: Wastewater analyst Jordan Peccia reporting latest figures Monday on WNHH FM.
New Haven’s Covid-19 rate has by one measure dropped about 96 percent since the height of the Omicron wave and is continuing to fall.
Might it be time to retire mask mandates for now?
That fact, and that question, emerged Monday during a conversation on WNHH FM’s “LoveBabz LoveTalk” program with Yale Professor of Chemical & Environmental Engineering Jordan Peccia.
Since the Covid-19 pandemic swept New Haven in March 2020, Peccia and a team of colleagues have produced weekly analyses of wastewater from the East Shore treatment plant. They have produced the most accurate and influential updates of how the coronavirus is trending locally.
At the height of the Omicron variant’s wave here, he said, his team measured approximately 250,000 Covid copies per millileter of wastewater.
“We’re below 10,000 now,” Peccia reported, based on his team’s analysis of wastewater collected last Tuesday.
“And they’re [still] going down,” he said of the cases.
That means “we are where we were last May,” Peccia said. That’s when Covid levels plunged enough for masking and indoor requirements to be lifted.
Peccia’s team — which includes PhD student Alessandro Zulli and undergraduates Annabelle Pan, Marcy Sanchez, and Cade Brown — expects to have an updated figure to report on Wednesday about samples retrieved this week from the treatment plant’s freezer. Peccia predicted the new number will drop to around 5,000.
So New Haven can expect to be back where we were last June, the nadir of the pandemic so far, when Covid was considered more dangerous to unvaccinated people.
Like other areas, New Haven has seen cases evolve in recent weeks from the Omicron BA1 to the Omicron BA2 variant, Peccia reported. That has not coincided with any uptick in cases overall or any reasons to expect one, he said.
Peccia was asked if he believes it’s time to lift mask mandates, at least until a new wave of cases.
“Personally, yes,” he responded. He added that “that’s a policy decision, not a science decision,” and therefore not necessarily his area of expertise.
That said, he noted that “masks can be marginally effective” under some circumstances to contain the spread of illness from Covid-19, but far, far more effective is vaccination, especially against severe illness. He argued that schools should require Covid-19 vaccinations the way they require vaccinations against other infectious diseases.
He also seconded an argument made this past week by New York TImes columnist David Leonhardt about how to interpret the phrase “following the science”: It doesn’t mean that people and policymakers should punt on wrestling with risk-weighing decisions like mandates in favor of iron-clad guaranteed pronouncements from “scientists.” Yes, scientists play a crucial role in producing information as a basis of decision-making. Science should not be ignored. But “science isn’t a god,” Peccia said. “We have to constantly question and modify” based on new information. And, he said, “we need to be able to handle complex” questions.
As for the future, Peccia predicted a Covid-19 resurgence in the area in the fall and winter, when it gets cold and people spend more time indoors. If so, count on New Haven’s wastewater analysts to find out first, and give us a head’s up.
Click on the video above to watch the full conversation with bearer of good news Jordan Peccia on WNHH FM’s “LoveBabz LoveTalk” program.