Illinois Department of Public Health launches online COVID tracker using wastewater

CHICAGO (CBS)-- The Illinois Department of Public Health has launch a new website to track COVID-19 levels in wastewater in Chicago and across the state. 

The new website that tracks the levels from samples collected twice a week and taken to a high-throughput lab at the University of Illinois at Chicago for analysis.

"Monitoring wastewater for the coronavirus has been proven to be an accurate and cost-effective way to measure COVID-19's presence in a community," health officials said in a written release.

Now that residents have switched to at-home COVID testing, wastewater is a way for public health officials to receive data.

You can use the interactive map to locate your community data.