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Three days before Thanksgiving, a planeload of passengers from South Africa touched down in San Francisco. One of them was a woman who was in the early stages of a Covid-19 infection, though she wouldn't know it for almost another week. 

 

It happened to be the same day that scientists 10,000 miles away in Botswana and South Africa began alerting the world to a new and highly mutated version of the virus that causes Covid-19.

 

Alexandria Boehm, a professor of civil engineering at Stanford University, read about the usual pattern of mutations in the yet-to-be-named variant and sprang into action.

 

For more than a year, Boehm and her team of 45 people at the Sewer Coronavirus Alert Network, or SCAN, have been collecting and testing daily sludge samples from wastewater processing plants across Northern California, hunting for fragments of the new coronavirus.

 

Wastewater-based epidemiology has proven to be so reliable in dozens of pilot projects across the US that the government has invested millions to create the National Wastewater Surveillance System, or NWSS, a network of 400 testing sites spread across 19 states that is coordinated by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

 

Boehm's SCAN is part of that network, which has been quietly operating behind the scenes, generating data for public health departments across the country, since September 2020.

 

For the first time, the CDC will publish data that looks at how much coronavirus is turning up in the country's wastewater. It will add this testing data to its Covid-19 dashboard.

 

Tests show that there's been a decrease in the amount of virus at two-thirds of the NWSS's 400 sites from levels measured 15 days ago, according to a CDC official familiar with the planning.

 

More than 500 sites will begin submitting data in the coming weeks, the CDC says. A media briefing on the surveillance system is scheduled for Friday.

Data from anywhere with a sewer connection
 

SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, is encased in an oily envelope. After it invades our bodies and begins to furiously clone itself, some of those copies are shed into our intestines, where the fatty parts of the virus stick to the fats in stool. When we poop, genetic material from the virus gets flushed down the toilet into the wastewater stream, where it can be detected by the same kinds of tests labs use to detect the virus from nasal swabs: real time polymerase chain reaction tests, or RT-PCR.

 

This kind of testing is highly sensitive. It can pick up the presence of the virus when just one person out of 100,000 in a given area, or sewershed, is infected.

 

And because wastewater testing doesn't depend on people to realize they're sick and seek out a test, or even to have symptoms at all, it's often the earliest warning a community has that wave of Covid-19 infections is on the way.

 

The CDC estimates that it takes five to seven days after a toilet flushes to get the wastewater data to its COVID Tracker, and and the samples typically turn positive in an area four to six days before clinical cases show up.

 

"As long as people are using a toilet that's connected to a sewer, we can get information on those cases in that community," said Amy Kirby, a CDC microbiologist who leads the NWSS project.

 

Government investment has taken what had been a little-known branch of public health and brought it into the mainstream.

 

"It's really exploded the field," said Colleen Naughton, a civil engineer at the University of California at Merced who runs the @CovidPoops19 Twitter account. "We did wastewater monitoring for other pathogens before this, like poliovirus, but it's really, the amount of people involved in everything has really increased exponentially."

 

Jumping into action
Speed is essential to making wastewater testing useful. So when Boehm heard the gravity behind the alerts of a new variant emerging 10,000 miles away, she didn't delay.

 

"It all happened very, very quickly, right around Thanksgiving and the holidays, which is a really inconvenient time for things to happen," she said.

SCAN -- a partnership between Stanford, Emory University and the University of Michigan -- worked long hours to change the monitoring system over to a new test.

The Monday before Thanksgiving, Boehm alerted her team to the new variant. On Tuesday, they downloaded the handful of gene sequences for the new variant that had been sent to GISAID, a website used by researchers around the world to share information about the new coronavirus. They started to design a test that could pick up several of its telltale changes, including amino acids that were deleted from a chunk of sites in its spike protein and the addition of three amino acids at another place on its spike.

 

Boehm ordered supplies: the chemical probes they would need to run their new test. She knew that delivery could take weeks, but she says they got lucky and got the new chemicals in just seven days.

 

But it wasn't just luck. She had done this many times over the past year, first for the Alpha variant and then Beta, Gamma, Delta and Mu.

 

While they waited for the supplies, Boehm dusted off an older test her team had been using to find signs of the Alpha variant. Like Omicron, Alpha is missing certain amino acids from a key location on its spike protein. These deletions cause a pattern on lab tests called an s-gene target failure.

 

"We knew Alpha was basically gone. It's extinct in our region," she said. That meant any hits on the Alpha tests were probably the new variant.

 

On Thursday, Thanksgiving, they got their first hit. A sample in Merced tested positive on the old test.

 

On Friday, the World Health Organization gave the variant they were hunting a name, Omicron, and officially listed it as a variant of concern.

 

The following Tuesday, another sample -- this time from Sacramento -- was positive, and on Wednesday, Gov. Gavin Newsom and the CDC announced that the first American had tested positive for Omicron in San Francisco.

 

The woman had recently traveled from South Africa, landing in San Francisco on Nov. 22. She didn't seek out testing until nearly a week later, on Monday, Nov. 28, four days after the first wastewater sample in Merced was positive.

 

In the days that followed, more positive samples turned up from Sacramento.

 

And in Santa Clara County, they got their first hit in Palo Alto on Dec. 7, the same day a person living in same sewershed became that county's first case.

 

What started as a trickle of positive samples quickly became a steady stream. On Dec. 16, the Santa Clara County Health Department hosted a news conference warn the public based, in large part, on what they were seeing in the wastewater data.

 

"When I look around the corner ahead, what I see is a deluge of Omicron. What I see is one of the most challenging moments that we've had yet in the pandemic," said Dr. Sara Cody, director of public health for Santa Clara County.

 

The limitations of wastewater testing
The CDC's Kirby says the system worked well for the arrival of Omicron in California. Colorado, Houston, and New York City. She published a snapshot of those efforts in the January 21 Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

 

"What we hear most often is that our health department partners say this gives them confidence to know what's going on in their communities. So truly, are cases going up or down? And that's because it is completely independent of health care and clinical testing," she says.

 

Kirby says it's also a useful tool to let counties and cities know where to direct limited resources.

"So if you have, for example, mobile testing capacity, and you want to decide which communities could most use that additional testing capacity, wastewater surveillance is really useful for that," she says.

 

There are some blind spots in the system. Although 80% of homes in the US are connected to sewers, the other 20% or so rely on septic systems. These homes, which are mostly in rural areas, wouldn't be covered by the testing.

 

Wastewater testing is also harder to interpret and less useful in areas where people come and go often, like tourist destinations.

 

It's also difficult to compare data between sewersheds because different areas use different sampling methods. Some take samples directly from the water with thin cotton swabs encased in 3-D printed submarines, while others collect and sample biosolids. Sewersheds can be very different sizes, which also complicated comparisons. The CDC's new dashboard shows data at the ZIP code level.

 

Finally, this kind of testing can't signal when a community is free from the virus because the threshold of detection -- how many people have to be positive in an area to show up in a water sample -- isn't known.

 

For these reasons, the CDC says wastewater surveillance is best used along with case-based surveillance.

 

To avoid direct comparisons, Kirby says, the dashboard will compare each site to its own past results. The main metric will be the percent change concentration at the same site over the past 15 days. The other metric people will be able to see is how many detections there were over that same 15 days, how many samples tested positive at all.

 

"As you can imagine, right now, that's not a very useful metric, because everywhere is positive. But as cases go down and we see much lower rates, that will become the metric you'll want to follow to see if SARS-CoV-2 is re-emerging in your community," Kirby said.

 

Kirby says wastewater monitoring will be around long after Covid is gone, too. By the end of the year, the CDC plans to expand the number of pathogens tracked on the dashboard to include influenza, a fungal superbug called Candida auris, and foodborne threats like E. coli and salmonella.

 

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Hello Great River at Tribble Mill neighbors,

 

Time To Catch Up, our monthly newsletter, has been emailed to all of our residents that have email addresses on file.

 

If you did not receive it, go to

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The Tigers (13-5) got contributions from a large group of players led by

Ashanti Bryant and Courtney Nesbitt, who had 14 points each.

Bryant added four rebounds, three assists and one steal, and

Nesbitt had six rebounds, three steals and three assists.

Mearah Whitehead (eight points, seven rebounds, three steals),

Kyndall Collins (six points, five rebounds, three blocks),

Mia Walker (six points, four rebounds, one steal) and

Taniya McGowan (five points, three rebounds, three steals, two blocks) also played well.

 

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I am sure that you have seen the Camp Gladiator's, "Gladiators" working out 

in the Commons area parking lot here at Great River at Tribble Mill. 

 

 

You probably thought, "What in the world are they doing out there and how can I do it, too."

 

Well one of our Great River at Tribble Mill neighbors, Rosha Lollar, is a certified 

personal trainer and is very passionate about fitness.

She has brought Camp Gladiator Fitness to Great River at Tribble Mill.

 

 

“I am passionate about fitness because I’m passionate about life.

 

 

 

 

Archer’s wrestling team rolled to the Region 7-AAAAAAA Duals title on Saturday.

The Tigers posted victories over Discovery (70-6), Berkmar (69-12) and

Dunwoody (69-12), earning the right to host

Class AAAAAAA State Duals prelims next weekend.

 

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A Massachusetts school district has invited two new police officers to

patrol its buildings, only these cops have four paws and aren't detecting crime. They're detecting Covid.

A pair of specially-trained dogs, 14-month-old labs named Huntah and Duke,

began their training in May 2021, and now roam the

halls of schools in the Freetown-Lakeville Regional School District.

The Bristol County Sheriff's Office worked closely with Florida International University

to train the dogs, said Jonathan Darling, the agency's public information officer.

The two were trained similarly to how narcotic dogs are, Darling said.

Trainers took a mask which had been worn by a person who tested positive,

and after using a UV light to kill the virus, the mask was cut into

pieces and placed in a plastic bag, to help the scent become imprinted on the dogs.

Covid causes metabolic changes, which in turn produces a specific odor,

according to FIU research, allowing for dogs like

Huntah and Duke to be another way to help stop the spread, Darling said.

Another study from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine

found dogs could detect Covid after six to eight weeks of training.

In the preprint study, six dogs were able to accurately identify Covid 82-94% of the time.

While early results appear promising, it is likely too early to know whether

Covid-sniffing dogs could actually be used as a tool to fight the pandemic in the real world.

"This could be compromised by the density of individuals in crowded

spaces and whether well-ventilated external spaces, where odours are rapidly

dispersed, compromise the ability of the dogs to detect individuals with

low levels of infection," Lawrence Young, a virologist at

Warwick Medical School in the United Kingdom, said in a statement.

School superintendent Rick Medeiros first found out about Covid-detection

dogs after reading a news release from the sheriff's office in August

announcing Huntah and Duke's training completion,

and decided to bring the dogs into his five schools.

"Our number one priority is to safely keep our students and staff in school

for in-person learning and we believe this was just one

more mitigation strategy to help us reach that goal," Medeiros said.

With a district with nearly 3,000 students and 400 staff members,

Medeiros said it was important the dogs don't disrupt the school day.

But after having the dogs come in, he reported it has been great for both students and staff.

The dogs come to the schools weekly and work to detect cases in empty

classrooms, auditoriums, cafeterias and gymnasiums, Mederiros said. If Covid is detected,

the authorities tell the health nurse who relays the information to the people affected.

When he first had the idea of bringing the dogs into the school, he wanted to

assure parents and community members they were not

going to line up all the kids and have the dogs go up and down the line.

"They come while students are in school, it's really not

disruptive or intimidating," Medeiros said. "These were not drug sniffing dogs."

Darling said both the Fairhaven and Norton school districts have reached

out to the office to have their schools screened. Each district has five schools,

meaning the dogs would screen 15 schools once a week, which is "perfectly feasible," Darling said.

This service would come at no cost to the school.

As of now, the two dogs are only dedicated to Covid, but Darling said their

duties may change depending on what's needed. Other duties could include finding missing people, he said.

"They are officers just like anybody else," Darling said.

"We want to keep people safe, that's what law enforcement is all about."

 

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What’s this? InGwinnett is a fresh and inclusive publication where you can

experience all of the services, events, and activities that Community Services offers…in Gwinnett!

This new publication combines the Gwinnett L.I.F.E., Gwinnett Extend, and OneSTOP program

guides into one publication reflecting our growing, diverse, and vibrant community!

Readers will find information on services offered as well as exciting events, programs, and

activities for all ages to enjoy!

This is truly an excellent general resource, event and Gwinnett County information source.

 

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Focuses on simplifying services and new biweekly recycling schedule for 2022.

“It’s a Beautiful Day in Lawrenceville!” is the new slogan for the City of Lawrenceville’s

Sanitation Department. Launching this month, the City is making an effort to simplify

its services for customers through smart infographics, calendars, direct mail, and a positive focus.

“Lawrenceville is a beautiful city,” said Mayor David Still. “Our Streets and Sanitation

employees play a huge role in keeping our city beautiful on a daily basis

through the many services they provide.

And what better way to be greeted than, ‘It’s a beautiful day in Lawrenceville!’ “

Over the last three years, the City of Lawrenceville has made several changes

in its sanitation operations to improve efficiency, including reducing weekly

trash collection from five days to four in order to allow one day per week

for employees to work on city projects.

“Many customers don’t realize how many services we offer,” said Barry Mock,

Assistant City Manager and Public Works Director. “Lawrenceville’s Sanitation

Department offers eight different services every week, many of which require a separate vehicle.”

A beloved free service of many long-time residents is the annual leaf service.

From November 1 – April 30, the leaf truck travels throughout the city limits

Monday through Friday, gathering leaves residents have raked to the curb.

Additional services include weekly trash collection, free mulch, curbside limb

and grass collection, prescheduled large item pick up,

curbside recycling, and a new glass recycling drop-off station.

The City of Lawrenceville opened a glass recycling drop-off station in October 2021,

accepting clear and colored glass, seven days per week, 7 am to 7 pm.

Located at Lawrenceville Public Works, 435 W. Pike Street,

users do not need to be a city resident to utilize the glass recycling station.

Another focus of the “It’s a beautiful day in Lawrenceville” campaign will be the

made the decision to switch to a cost-saving biweekly plan.

Residential addresses will be designated as a “blue” or “orange”

recycling week. After December 1, residents may determine their status by

visiting lville.city/MyCityServices and following the task bar on the left.

Prior to December 31, City Sanitation staff will also affix a blue or orange sticker

to each residential recycling bin, indicating the assigned week.

Customers with questions after December 1 should contact

customer service at customerservice@lawrencevillega.org or 678.407.6675.

The City’s Customer Service Department also plays an important role in

ensuring city sanitation and utility customers experience a beautiful day in

Lawrenceville. Customers are able to complete applications and paperwork

online, schedule service, set-up a bank draft, apply for a rebate and much more.

“The City has spent considerable time evaluating its Customer Service Department,

streamlining its processes, upgrading online payment options, and adding

additional online customer service options,” said Keith Lee, Director of Finance. “It’s a team effort.”

Detailed information about City of Lawrenceville Sanitation Services and the

“It’s a Beautiful Day in Lawrenceville” campaign can be found at 

lville.city/sanitation.

Sanitation customers are encouraged to watch their mailboxes and

utility bills for 2022 recycling calendars and other helpful information

in the coming weeks. Visit www.lawrencevillega.org for additional information

on the City of Lawrenceville and follow the city on

social media for important updates and featured information.

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks Alicia Z. Lawrenceville

 

 

 

 

 

 

A great place to see what is happening in Gwinnett County Sports.

At the top, click on the logo of the school you are interested in

and see the sports activity for that school.

 

 

 

 

 

 

On Dec. 9, word of a newly discovered computer bug in a hugely popular piece of computer code started rippling around the cybersecurity community. By the next day, nearly every major software company was in crisis mode, trying to figure out how their products were affected and how they could patch the hole.

The descriptions used by security experts to describe the new vulnerability in an extremely common section of code called log4j border on the apocalyptic.

“The log4j vulnerability is the most serious vulnerability I have seen in my decades-long career,” Jen Easterly, U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency director, said in a Thursday interview on CNBC.

So why is this obscure piece of software causing so much panic, and should regular computer users be worried?

WHAT TO KNOW

Log4j is a chunk of code that helps software applications keep track of their past activities. Instead of reinventing a “logging” — or record-keeping — component each time developers build new software, they often use existing code like log4j instead. It’s free on the Internet and very widely used, appearing in a “big chunk” of Internet services, according to Asaf Ashkenazi, chief operating officer of security company Verimatrix.

Each time log4j is asked to log something new, it tries to make sense of that new entry and add it to the record. A few weeks ago, the cybersecurity community realized that by simply asking the program to log a line of malicious code, it would execute that code in the process, effectively letting bad actors grab control of servers that are running log4j.

Reports differ when it comes to who first raised the alarm about the vulnerability. Some people say it surfaced in a forum dedicated to the video game Minecraft. Others point to a security researcher at Chinese tech company Alibaba. But experts say it’s the biggest software vulnerability of all time in terms of the number of services, sites and devices exposed.

Software bugs crop up all the time. Why is this one different?

The fact that log4j is such a ubiquitous piece of software is what makes this such a big deal. Imagine if a common type of lock used by millions of people to keep their doors shut was suddenly discovered to be ineffective. Switching a single lock for a new one is easy, but finding all the millions of buildings that have that defective lock would take time and an immense amount of work.

Log4j is part of the Java programming language, which is one of the foundational ways software has been written since the mid-90s. Huge swaths of the computer code that modern life runs on uses Java and contains log4j. Cloud storage companies such as Google, Amazon and Microsoft, which provide the digital backbone for millions of other apps, are affected. So are giant software sellers whose programs are used by millions, such as IBM, Oracle and Salesforce. Devices that connect to the Internet such as TVs and security cameras are at risk as well. Hackers who try to break into digital spaces to steal information or plant malicious software suddenly have a massive new opportunity to try to get into nearly anywhere they want. That doesn’t mean everything will be hacked, but it just got a lot easier to do so — just as if the locks on half of the homes and businesses in a city suddenly stopped working all at once.

On top of all that, the vulnerability is straightforward to take advantage of. In the Minecraft video game, it’s as easy as typing a line of malicious code into the public chat box during a game. On Twitter, some people changed their display names to strings of bad code, Wired reported.

The vulnerability also gives hackers access to the heart of whatever system they’re trying to get into, cutting past all the typical defenses software companies throw up to block attacks. Overall, it’s a cybersecurity expert’s nightmare.

So how is the tech industry responding?

Computer programmers and security experts have been working night and day since the vulnerability was publicized to fix it in whatever piece of software they’re responsible for. At Google alone, more than 500 engineers had been going through reams and reams of code to make sure it was safe, according to one employee. That process was being repeated at all kinds of tech companies, spawning an entire new genre of memes from coders lamenting the hellish week they’ve been through.

“Some of the people didn’t see sleep for a long time, or they sleep like three hours, four hours and wake back up,” Ashkenazi said. “We were working around-the-clock. It’s a nightmare since it was out. It’s still a nightmare.”

Nearly 50,000 Facebook users may have been targets of private surveillance, company says

Are hackers already taking advantage of it?

Hackers have been working just as hard as the security experts to exploit log4j before the bug gets patched. Cybersecurity software company Check Point said in a blog post that it saw hackers send out 60 different variations of the original exploit in a single 24-hour period. Hackers have already tried to use it to get into nearly half of all corporate networks around the world, Check Point said. Most of the hacking has focused on hijacking computers to run bitcoin mining software, a tactic hackers have used for years to make money, but on Dec. 15, Check Point said Iranian state-backed hackers used the vulnerability to try to break into Israeli government and business targets.

Though the bug was present for years, it’s unlikely criminal hackers have known about it until now, because if they had, security experts would have spotted it being used before, said William Malik, vice president at cybersecurity company Trend Micro. That doesn’t mean that more sophisticated government hackers, such as those working for the United States, Russia, Israel or China, haven’t used it before though, he said.

CISA has given federal civilian agencies a Dec. 24 deadline for patching log4j. But even with engineers working around-the-clock to meet that deadline, hackers will have potentially found their way into hundreds of thousands of services and sites by then, Ashkenazi said. In some cases, hackers will install “back doors” or malicious code that stays put even after the initial log4j problem gets fixed. Identifying and removing those back doors will be a whole separate task for security experts.

The vulnerability also gives ransomware attackers a fresh way to break into computer networks and freeze out their owners. These kinds of attacks have increased over the last two years, with hospitals, local governments and businesses all being targeted and asked to send millions in cryptocurrency to hackers or risk being locked out of their computers indefinitely and having their sensitive information exposed.

The anatomy of a ransomware attack

On Dec. 17, cybersecurity firm AdvIntel said it detected well-known ransomware gang Conti scanning the web for log4j and then launching an attack of its own.

And not everyone will fix the problem in the first place. Getting an entire industry to update a specific piece of software quickly is next to impossible. Many companies won’t end up doing it, or will think they aren’t affected when really they are.

That means log4j could be a problem for years to come.

What can we do?

To take advantage of the vulnerability, hackers have to deliver malicious code to a service running log4j. Phishing emails — those messages that try to trick you into clicking a link or opening an attachment — are one way to do so. Keep an eye out for an influx of phishing messages in the coming days, Malik said, as hackers scramble to plant bad code in as many places as possible.

If you get an email saying that your account has been compromised or your package failed to deliver, don’t open any links or attachments. First, make sure you actually have an account with that company or were expecting mail from that carrier. Then, find a real customer service number or address online and reach out that way.

The best thing regular computer users can do is make sure the apps they use are updated to their most recent versions, Malik said. Developers will be sending out patches over the coming days to fix any log4j issues, and downloading those quickly will be important.

For the most part, consumers should just wait and let the experts fix their software programs.

“Sit back, take a deep breath. It’s not the end of the world,” Malik said. “It’s going to be very busy the next few days for security folks.”

 

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Archer’s wrestling team won Saturday’s Pat McCance Invitational at Loganville.

Florin Myndresku (160 pounds), Kam’Ron Shannon-Likely (170) and Dominic Martinez (182)

won individual tournament titles for the Tigers, while Max Hennebaul (106),

Zachary Stearns (113) and Sam Rwibuka (285) were second in their weight classes.

Archer’s Martin Maze (120) and Alex Mincey (third, 220) added third-place showings.

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