As the country continues to ease social restrictions, and more and more people are moving about the country, raw sewage is set to become an important new front in the fight to prevent a resurgence of Covid-19.
This is particularly so in the greater Dublin area where a team of researchers at UCD's School of Microbiology are already analysing samples of wastewater from treatment plants in Enniskerry, Shanganagh and Ringsend twice a week.
They are tracking how much genetic material from the virus they can find in Dublin's sewage. If they find that the quantity of 'RNA' from Covid-19 in their sewage samples starts to go up, it will give them a really good early indication that the disease is on the rise again in the Dublin region.