After the Walkerton tragedy in 2000, when seven more people died and 2300 became ill from an outbreak of E. Judge Dennis O’Connor, who led an investigation into the tragedy and made adjustments to drinking water protections in Canada, warned that “the long-term key deserves to be vigilance. “
“Let’s never be complacent,” O’Connor said.
And nearly 3 1/2 years into the COVID-19 pandemic, O’Connor’s vigilance call in the service of public fitness will need to be remembered and implemented for COVID-19, Professor Mark Servos said.
He holds the Canada Research Chair in Water Quality Protection in the Department of Biology at the University of Waterloo, and is instrumental in efforts to get drinking water testing off the ground. Array in Ontario and across the country.
Wastewater monitoring has become a vital tool for detecting COVID-19 outbreaks in communities during the pandemic, and continues to be used in the search for the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, as well as other pathogens.
But it’s unclear whether existing degrees of government investment to monitor wastewater for SARS-CoV-2 will continue beyond next year. Experts are calling on the federal government to create a standardized wastewater tracking formula and update the mosaic used today.
Other infected people shed the SARS-CoV-2 virus before symptoms appear and while sick, not only through nasal and oral exhalations, but also in their feces.
A pattern of wastewater tracking data for SARS-CoV-2 in cities, according to Public Health Agency of Canada (CTV News)
According to the latest update from the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) on July 28, 41 per cent of wastewater monitoring sites across the country showed a low in COVID-19 degrees in wastewater, while 28 per cent showed an increase.
Meanwhile, COVID-19 hospitalizations in Canada continue to decline, as does the number of patients in intensive care units. However, infectious disease specialist Dr. Isaac Bopassch cautions that it’s “only as smart as it’s going on to happen for a while. “, as we can expect the maximum of the “parameters to probably accumulate in the fall”.
Professor Mark Servos, Canada Research Chair in Water Quality Protection in the Department of Biology at the University of Waterloo, removes a manhole cover. Before the pandemic, his studies focused on the effect of indirect pollutants on fish and other aquatic life. . (Source: University of Waterloo)
The stumbling block tool found to stumble upon such a building as soon as possible is wastewater monitoring, which does not rely on other people getting tested or self-testing and reporting the result.
But experts like Servos point out that as the severity of COVID-19 cases decreases, so does the number of tests performed, as jurisdictions in Canada have ended pilot projects or reduced their number, tracking the concentration of the virus in towns and communities.
“Wastewater monitoring continues across Canada, but with reduced intensity,” Servos told CTVNews. ca. “Ontario used to have 170 control sites, now there are 70 left. Quebec has 4 sites now. “
PHAC continues to verify, but its knowledge covers 39 verification sites across Canada.
The researchers say that testing relief is a trend that shows complacency can be established after 3 years of effective surveillance that has provided wastewater tracking, not only through detecting the virus in communities, but also through identifying trends and giving a head start to establishments that have been making public adequacy decisions.
A recurring chorus of experts who spoke to CTVNews. ca the need for a federal strategy to create a tea water tracking formula for COVID-19.
“As things stand, we’re kind of in silos,” said Robert Delatolla, director of the CoVaRR-Net Wastewater Research Group and professor of civil engineering at the University of Ottawa.
Delatolla highlighted the other systems underway in the province of British Columbia in Quebec City.
“Then there are the projects of other people who are doing it in the eastern parts of the country. And then there’s PHAC, which runs a program where they do some sites across the country,” Delatolla told CTVNews. ca.
Professor Robert Delatolla poses at a pumping station used to collect wastewater samples that are tested for COVID on Thursday, April 8, 2021, in Ottawa. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld
“So, we have several systems, but they are all independent; And the datasets of each of those systems are not connected or connected to each other. “
Scientist Mike McKay, who worked extensively with Delatolla and Servos to start and run wastewater testing in Ontario, agreed.
“Unfortunately, it’s been a bit piecemeal,” he told CTVNews. ca. “And I understand why, because they have to wait for the provincial budget to go down and the budget for those activities to be released. “
Typically, the Ontario government releases its annual budget in the spring. Currently, provincial investment for province-wide wastewater testing is scheduled to end by the end of March 2024.
“After that, who knows?” McKay said. I think there’s a consensus that it’s too valuable a tool to give up. But the problem, you know, is that it’s all about tracking, and as I know from my paintings on the Great Lakes, tracking is the first thing to do. Distance budgets when no problem.
McKay is executive director and professor at the Great Lakes Environmental Research Institute at the University of Windsor. His studies focus on the Great Lakes, where he studies destructive blooms of cyanobacteria, or “green slag in lakes,” as he described them, among other microbiological organisms. But Delatolla, had never worked with wastewater before the pandemic.
“You know, many of us pivoted the pandemic to sign up for the ranks of those seeking to fight COVID-19. And I am one,” he told CTVNews. ca. Su laboratory organization switched to monitoring wastewater in aid of public health. , shortly after learning that a team in the Netherlands effectively detected SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater from Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport in March 2020.
Great Lakes Environmental Research Institute Executive Director Mike McKay (left) and environmental professor Ken Drouillard (right) in Mitchell’s Bay, Ontario. Tuesday, February 15, 2022. (Chris Campbell/CTV Windsor)
Even Delatolla, whose works focus on biological wastewater treatment and disease surveillance, had to make an intellectual turn when he came up with the idea of tracking wastewater for the presence of the virus.
In fact, it was in mid-March 2020 when his wife told him to start looking for SARS-CoV-2 in water.
“And I said, I’m sure not, it doesn’t make any sense. It’s a respiratory disease,” he told CTVNews. ca. And then, of course, a few days later, the Netherlands discovered it in the sewage. So we thought, okay, we’ll do it. And we started and we were very fortunate to be the first organization in Canada to stumble upon that. “
Hadi Dhiyebi, an environmental biologist at the University of Waterloo and a member of Mark Servos’ group, said he remembered Servos discussing the Dutch findings with Bernadette Conant, executive director of the Canadian Water Network (CWN) at the time.
“When the shutdown happened in March 2020, no one approached us. But (Conant) had a verbal exchange with Mark and highlighted this organization in the Netherlands that does wastewater tracking that coincided with clinical instances and can be helpful,” Dhiyabi said. So Mark called me and asked if we could reflect this with our samples. Before anyone approached us, Mark took it upon himself to see if we could expand this technique. “
Hadi Dhiyebi is a water quality and ecotoxicology technician with the University of Waterloo’s Global Water Futures Programme and the Servos Group (Source: University of Waterloo)
He recalled at the time that there was “a lot of open collaboration in the world” for percentage of knowledge, and that tewater being so different everywhere, “they had to validate the strategies of our solutions”.
Delatolla said this open exchange of wisdom allowed things to move quickly, and the virus that causes COVID-19 was detected in local tea water a few weeks later, in April.
He reached out to Servos and McKay to evaluate their process, before, after all, reaching out to the Ontario COVID-19 Scientific Advisory Board, an organization of independent scientists who have provided recommendations to the Ontario government on COVID-19.
After meeting with the advisory board several times, Peter Juni, who was the clinical director at the time, approached Delatella’s organization to develop a program.
“And they worked together and developed what the Wastewater Monitoring Initiative is,” said Delatolla, the program in Ontario recently funded through March 2024.
This initiative has grown into a collaboration involving thirteen universities, 22 public institutions, 22 faculty and 175 locations across Ontario.
“Really the dominant type of surveillance program in the country,” Relatolla said. At its peak, 260 wastewater sites were tested across the country and Ontario had 175. “So they created a very high-level program. “
By September 2020, they were testing wastewater every day and sharing knowledge with public health.
“And we had our knowledge, live, for the public to see in Ottawa. So I think we had the longest body of knowledge, the longest body of knowledge in North America, maybe the world,” Delatolla said.
Chand Mangat, a researcher at the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg, used to work with wastewater. In 2019, for example, he was researching the generation of wastewater tracking to monitor antimicrobial resistance, “and I was just beginning to perceive what this generation was and how it can only help the rise of antimicrobial resistance. “
In this project, his organization partnered with Environment Canada and Statistics Canada, which had a network of wastewater monitoring sites and professionals who analyzed wastewater for illicit drugs.
“So early in the pandemic, just talking to the other people at StatCan and looking for the knowledge that we go out internationally, a resolution made to put all our efforts into it,” he told CTVNews. ca. “We saw what was happening,” the agency said. Many teams have been involved in the reaction to the pandemic. And it’s only in a scenario like this that everyone is on deck directing their efforts toward the same problem.
Mangat is also the head of PHAC’s drinking water tracking unit in the One Health Division, as well as a member of CoVaRR-Net. But the biggest impediment is that there is no previous program in position in this express area.
“There is no wastewater tracking activity in the flowchart, you know what I mean?So we had to do things like build a lab, rent staff, bring in equipment. And it all happened at a breakneck pace,” he said.
Other experts who spoke to CTVNews. ca say all of this couldn’t have happened if so many other people on the floor, and tangentially, hadn’t joined the effort.
Wastewater tracking is not a new science. The practice of tracking pathogens in wastewater has been used for decades, and the virus that causes polio was removed from wastewater in 1932 in Philadelphia.
But to reliably track COVID-19 infections requires “innovation, complex science and collaborative partnerships,” said Bahar Aminvaziri, manager of the Wastewater Monitoring Initiative at Ontario’s Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Parks.
She told CTVNews. ca that it took an “unprecedented” point of cooperation from a multidisciplinary team of scientists, engineers and technical specialists for educational and study labs.
“Researchers like Dr. Servos, who had already developed laboratory protocols for such tests, took action, demonstrated ordinary leadership, and shared their wisdom with other think tanks in Ontario to create a competent network of thirteen best-serving study laboratories. Aminvaziri said CTVNews. ca.
He added that municipalities across the province and operators of wastewater treatment plants have also come forward “with remarkable enthusiasm and willingness to make their components and samples provided normally. “
Delatolla said the pandemic has shown how organizations can temporarily combine to deal with a public health crisis.
“From a non-public point of view, I think it’s the biggest impact component of my career. I was surprised at how many components everyone took and in the clinical network, it obviously had an impact,” he said.
“I think a lot of classes were learned here. Investments were implemented that were implemented quickly. People were motivated. They got rid of many obstacles that slowed our progress. “
McKay added that he was amazed by the cooperation of all the other teams during the pandemic.
“I look back and the last few years have been strange but wonderful. The complicity of this wastewater consortium has been incredible,” he said. , you have teams competing and other people are reserved and don’t share. And it was a time of hope and sharing, running with each other to expand techniques for the common good.
Delatolla said wastewater analyses have highlighted a vital factor when it comes to tracking the fitness of other communities, and that factor is fitness equity.
“We’ve realized from COVID that the disproportion of deaths among vulnerable populations, underserved populations, compared to the average across the country has been shocking to those of us who don’t see this knowledge every day,” he said. And I think these sewage paintings have also been shown to be able to get into communities, shelters, long-term care facilities, remote communities, Indigenous communities, First Nations communities. We have noticed that this is not published as much. It is not carried out. So much in the media, but this painting is definitely ongoing. “
But he said the effect of the paintings is there, felt and will continue to make a difference.
“So I think there are two parts to this. Let’s prepare for pandemics in the long term, but in the meantime and in the long term, let’s continue to serve and publicize fitness equity across the country. Because it’s an affordable way to have a purpose in the suitability of a community. “
One sewage pattern is in the Northwest Territories. (Credit: Justin Hazenberg)
Mangat also spoke about the strength and scope of wastewater in measuring the burden of disease in communities.
“The pandemic is a pretty dynamic scenario in terms of who we were testing, when we were testing, and their availability,” he told CTVNews. ca, “and probably a pretty central feature of telecom water tracking is that none of that matters, right?Because as long as other people go to the bathroom, they count themselves.
“And that’s vital for us from a justice standpoint, because it doesn’t matter if you interact with the health care network or the testing infrastructure. If you use the facilities, you give a contribution to the Monitoring System. “
Tracking COVID-19 Cases, Hospitalizations, and Sewer Figures Canada
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