COVID-19 levels low in Canada’s wastewater

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This article was published 12/07/2023 (836 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

While levels of COVID-19 have dropped significantly in Canada, the federal public health agency has no plan to stop studying the country’s wastewater, calling it “one of the key tools for the future of public health surveillance.”

The Public Health Agency of Canada stated it is working with provinces, territories and municipalities to expand wastewater monitoring and testing.

The agency said its scientists have used what they learned in the COVID-19 pandemic to help them study the presence of other diseases in wastewater, including antimicrobial resistant organisms, influenza, respiratory syncytial virus, polio and monkeypox.

“(The agency) is working with municipalities to collect and ship wastewater samples to laboratories for analysis. Knowing the daily or weekly changes in the amount of infectious disease detected in wastewater can help manage outbreaks (through public health action such as vaccination and testing) as well as health care resource allocation (such as hospital beds and staffing needs),” a Public Health Agency of Canada spokesperson stated.

The wastewater surveillance dashboard will remain active, the agency said.

The dashboard was updated Tuesday to include data up to July 4. It showed only two communities in Canada — both in P.E.I. — had logged increases of COVID-19 in municipal wastewater. The majority of the 39 monitored regions reported decreases.

In Manitoba, COVID-19 viral load in wastewater has decreased at all surveillance sites, including Brandon and the north, south and west ends of Winnipeg.

For the past month, COVID-19 wastewater signals in Winnipeg have declined steadily, with no increases since about mid-June, according to the dashboard’s seven-day rolling average data of COVID-19 viral load.

— staff