Some communities also used it to track opioid use.īefore COVID, people wanted to use it for more pathogens like norovirus or salmonella and/or foodborne outbreaks, but setting up the infrastructure never seemed worth the investment. For instance, polio may not be circulating in the population, but if you look in the wastewater, you may find it there.
Prior to the pandemic, it was used to track polio. HOW HAS WASTEWATER SURVEILLANCE BEEN USED IN THE PAST? Over time, when we began to correlate concentrations of virus in the wastewater with community case levels, we began to realize what a useful tool this could be. HOW HAS THE PANDEMIC REVOLUTIONIZED THE FIELD OF WASTEWATER EPIDEMIOLOGY?ĭuring the pandemic, the methods of extracting the virus from a wastewater sample had to be innovated and developed quite quickly. It needs to be seen as one tool that health departments can use to get a clearer picture of what’s happening in their population. This should not be viewed as a replacement for testing. With a quick turnaround, it can be extremely useful as a leading indicator of what’s happening in our population.ĪRE THERE ANY DOWNSIDES TO USING WASTEWATER SURVEILLANCE?
You can get a look at your whole community in one day. HOW DOES THIS KIND OF SURVEILLANCE COMPARE TO INDIVIDUAL CLINICAL TESTING FOR COVID-19? For example, research showed that in New York, omicron was detected in the wastewater way before we got the first omicron case on the East Coast. Wastewater was able to tell us early on where this variant was spreading. Wastewater surveillance really showed its usefulness during the omicron wave. Health professionals previously used these indicators to understand what’s happening in the community.ĬAN YOU IDENTIFY DIFFERENT VARIANTS OF SARS-CoV-2 USING THIS METHOD?Ībsolutely. With at-home antigen tests, people are testing positive but aren’t reporting it to the health department. Wastewater can be used as an anonymous pooled sample to provide a look at what’s happening in the community and inform strategies around mitigation measures. WHY IS THIS USEFUL TO HEALTH PROFESSIONALS? From that, you’ll be able to get a readout of the virus and its concentration-so when we have a big spike in cases, that will correspond to the amount of virus in the wastewater. It’s as simple as you would think: You get a bottle and you can get a concentrated sample from a wastewater treatment plant, which is then brought to an environmental lab. HOW IS WASTEWATER SURVEILLANCE ACTUALLY DONE? This is useful, especially for the pandemic, because we’re able to track infections at a community level in a population-based way. We can use this to detect bacteria and viruses, as well as other things like opioids, or other markers human excretion. We look at the viral and bacterial genomes of whatever it is you’re flushing down that toilet. It’s basically flushing your toilet and getting a sample from that waste stream anywhere from when that flush starts all the way down to when it gets to the wastewater treatment plant.
WHAT IS WASTEWATER SURVEILLANCE AND WHY IS IT USEFUL? In this Q&A, adapted from the April 27 episode of Public Health On Call, Exum speaks with host Stephanie Desmon about how wastewater surveillance works and its potential for monitoring outbreaks from other viruses, including influenza and respiratory syncytial virus. Researchers like Natalie Exum, PhD ’16, an assistant scientist in Environmental Health and Engineering, have used this tool during the pandemic to spot potential COVID outbreaks, often before community cases are reported, as genetic material from the virus can be detected in fecal matter. Wastewater surveillance is exactly what it sounds like: Concentrated wastewater samples are collected and screened for different bacteria or viruses that may be present in a given community.
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