Helen Ouyang

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On a road in Aurora, Colorado, lined with used-car dealers and pawnshops sits a tan, low-rise building called Mango House. Inside, among international-food stalls and ethnic-clothing shops, is a family-medicine clinic that serves a largely refugee and immigrant community.

Not long ago, tracking the spread of a virus by sampling wastewater counted as a novelty in the United States. Today, wastewater monitoring offers one of the most comprehensive pictures anyone has of COVID-19’s summer surge. This type of surveillance has been so effective at forecasting the risks of the virus’s rise and fall that local governments are now looking for other ways to use it. That has meant turning from tracking infections to tracking illicit and high-risk drug use.