state had many free testing sites, and people were encouraged to use them.40 Massachusetts even pioneered the testing of sewage wastewater as a tripwire to give policymakers a way to identify early when and where community spread was getting under way in a certain area. (People shed the virus in their feces.) The data gleaned from testing raw sewage allowed the state’s public health officials to measure how prevalent the virus was in a community and better target interventions.
