SALT LAKE CITY: Wastewater tracking for COVID-19 will end soon.
The Utah Department of Health and Human Services continues to rely on what is flushed down the toilets of some 34 wastewater treatment plants across the state to track the spread of the virus, which is still deadly.
Now, it’s possible more will come from Washington, D. C. , for systems in Utah and across the country that are part of the National Wastewater Surveillance System, introduced through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention after the pandemic began in 2020.
Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, negotiated the inclusion of his recently introduced law to expand the nation’s wastewater tracking in a broader pandemic preparedness bill that won committee approval last week.
“This provision will ensure Utah’s already complicated wastewater tracking generation by ensuring it receives the investment it desires to continue investing in new studies and generation,” Romney’s office said in a news release.
Nathan LaCross, head of the state’s telecommunications water tracking program, said it’s “gratifying” to see the Senate take a “very important step” toward finding a screening formula that can be used for many other pathogens.
When it comes to COVID-19, LaCross said wastewater tracking is “one of the few reliable knowledge resources we have today,” given the “drastic drop” in the number of Utahns tested for the virus.
LaCross, an epidemiologist, said he understands why many Utahns may have “this feeling that it’s us. Our reaction has changed. ” But, he added, that doesn’t mean the virus will go away.
The most recent weekly figures for Utah posted Thursday on the state’s coronavirus. utah. gov online page show a roughly 15 percent increase in seven-day average cases, to just under 48 statewide, and only one death, a boy from Salt Lake County. between 65 and 84 years old.
At the same time, the amount of virus detected through wastewater tracking is expanding in 20% of wastewater treatment plants where samples are collected, and there were high levels of virus at four sites.
Utah began collecting wastewater data early in the pandemic in March 2020, which gave public fitness officials “a pretty smart idea” of COVID-19 patterns and trends in the state, LaCross said.
“It took a while to get there,” he said, because there has to be enough ancient knowledge to “make sense of what’s new. “useful results. “
The state stopped relying on cases early last year after mass testing sites were hit so hard by a surge caused by the omicron variant that Gov. Spencer Cox suggested Utahns with symptoms stay home rather than be muffled.
Utah’s tewater monitoring program, which is fully funded by the federal government, is lately moving to a more precise type of monitoring, LaCross said. He said the state is waiting to control more pathogens until the new formula is up and running.
There are discussions about adding influenza, RSV and Mpox, formerly known as monkeypox, to what is tested in wastewater, he said, while other probabilities come with antimicrobial and opioid resistance genes.
But LaCross said the state has ruled out tracking polio wastewater “for now,” despite a pattern taken in February 2022 in northern Utah for an out-of-state researcher who tested positive for poliovirus.
While the knowledge gathered from wastewater doesn’t identify individual cases, he said it’s helping public fitness officials direct resources like data on precautions to spaces where it’s needed most, he said.
Romney’s original bipartisan bill, co-sponsored by Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, featured investment grants to state, local, and tribal governments, as well as investments to expand wastewater knowledge-gathering practices.
Dubbed the Public Health Response and Emergency Detection Integrated Wastewater Monitoring Act or PREDICT Act, Romney’s bill is now part of the law passed last week through the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.
It remains to be seen how much money can be obtained for wastewater tracking efforts in this legislation, a reauthorization of the Pandemic Preparedness and Response Act, and all hazards that will expire on September 30.
“It’s not perfect. I’m sure we’ll also have new classes to be informed,” Romney said at the committee hearing, calling the law he and others helped negotiate “a fair effort to be informed of experiences beyond. “