CDC to ramp up wastewater monitoring program to track COVID-19
CBSN
Hundreds of wastewater treatment sites across the country will start submitting water samples to laboratories to detect the presence of COVID-19, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Friday. Data from the water samples can help communities detect the virus early on, and is now published to the CDC's COVID Data Tracker.
The updated data tracker allows people to see virus level changes in participating communities' wastewater over the last 15 days and will be updated daily, according to Dr. Amy Kirby, who leads the National Wastewater Surveillance program. The percentage of positive tests over the last 15 days will also be made available using the data tracker.
"The advantage of this CDC-supported dashboard is that it allows you to compare data across states directly," Kirby said.
President Joe Biden said France was America's "first friend" at its founding and is one of its closest allies more than two centuries later as he was honored with a state visit Saturday by French President Emmanuel Macron aimed at showing off their partnership on global security issues and easing past trade tensions.
The Consumer Federal Protection Bureau last week launched an inquiry into what the agency is calling "junk fees in mortgage closing costs." These additional fees, involving home appraisal, title insurance and other services, have spiked in recent years and can add thousands of dollars to the final cost of buying a home.
Retired Maj. Gen. William Anders, the former Apollo 8 astronaut who took the iconic "Earthrise" photo showing the planet as a shadowed blue marble from space in 1968, was killed Friday when the plane he was piloting alone plummeted into the waters off the San Juan Islands in Washington state. He was 90.