Houston COVID-19 wastewater level shows 320% increase from 1 year ago

HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) – For more than a year, the City of Houston Health Department has been testing wastewater to get a better idea of ​​how fast the virus is spreading and what will happen.

Now, Houston City Chief Medical Officer Dr David E. Persse has said virus levels have more than tripled since early July.

At a press briefing on Wednesday, Persse explained that using the sewage had predicted what the situation would look like at least two weeks in advance.

“The wastewater predicts what’s going to happen two to four weeks in advance,” Persse said. “We saw the value of wastewater go down, before we saw the positivity rate go down, before we saw hospital admissions go down.”

This is a method that Persse called “extremely reliable”.

You see sewage treatment plants all over Houston, 39 treatment facilities to be exact. They are responsible for treating over 250 million gallons of sewage per day and are connected by 6,100 miles of sewer lines.

This isn’t the first time that health experts have looked at wastewater levels to anticipate what to expect.

Earlier this year in March, as the British variant spread, Persse said the variant had been found “in large quantities” and was spreading rapidly throughout the city.

SEE ALSO: British variant found in 31 of 39 wastewater treatment plants, city says

At the time, said on February 8, the UK variant was found in 21 of the city’s 39 wastewater treatment plants. Fourteen days later, on February 22, he said the variant had been found in 31 of 39 processing plants.

“Nineteen percent of all viruses that have been tested in the city’s sewage have a genome compatible with the British variant,” Persse said. “This does not mean that 19% of people in Houston are infected with the UK variant… it does not mean that. We know that there is a fairly significant amount of the UK variant in our community and that it is spreading.”

WATCH: Dr David Persse on wastewater detection of the spread of COVID

So with the delta now proving to be the dominant variant, what are the current levels of wastewater like?

In June of this year, without a peak, the levels were at 250%. Two weeks ago the levels were at 231% and last week the levels were at 370%, according to Persse.

According to a tweet from the Department of Health, a graph also showed that current wastewater is 320% above the baseline of July 6, 2020.

“The virus is spreading quickly. It is spreading everywhere. It is spreading very intensely,” Persse said Wednesday. “We are at a level of viruses in sewage that we have never seen before.”

Given those numbers, Persse said the sewage predicts what we’ll see in positivity rates in two weeks, which also predicts what we’ll see in hospitalizations.

“I can pretty much guarantee you it will only get worse over the next four weeks,” said Persse, who also urged Houstonians to get the shot.

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