Researchers at the University of Barcelona, one of Spain's most prestigious universities, said on June 26 that they had detected the presence of the novel coronavirus in waste water samples collected on March 12, 2019. "These results, sent to a high impact journal and published in the archive medRxiv, suggest the infection was present before knowing about any case of COVID-19 in any part of the world," the statement said. The study was led by researchers from the Enteric Virus Laboratory of the University of Barcelona in collaboration with the public-private company Aigues de Barcelona, which is responsible for managing the water cycle in Barcelona's metropolitan area.