The University of Windsor's Alumni Hall Residence is under a "modified quarantine" after COVID-19 was found in wastewater tests.
Officials say the Windsor-Essex County Health Unit (WECHU) is providing on-site testing for residents to determine if an outbreak is present in the building at 750 Sunset Ave. Sunday.
The Great Lakes Institute for Environmental Research (GLIER) is spearheading testing that tracks COVID-19 excreted by humans in wastewater.
Executive Director Mike McKay says testing sites are set up at pipes that can only be traced back to specific buildings on campus.
"The results were sent to me showing repeatable detection of SARS-CoV-2 in the samples. At that point we alerted university officials and they got the ball rolling by involving the WECHU," added McKay, who says he was notified of the results coming from Alumni Hall Saturday afternoon.
He says testing will determine what steps are taken next.
"Is it coming from a resident? Is it coming from somebody who visited the residence? Is it coming from a staff member? That's what we don't know," he added.
McKay says close to 200 people within the residence will be tested for COVID-19.
"The potential of identifying and isolating an infection to prevent a larger scale outbreak; the benefit of that was much higher than waiting for confirmation and having an entire residence hall with a COVID-19 outbreak," he says.
The institute launched the isolated testing initiative on campus two months ago, according to McKay.
He says GLIER is also testing at water treatment plants in east and west Windsor to gather data for health officials.
The university received $300,000 to launch the research project in November of 2020.