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After spending months figuring out the best way to collect and analyze the feces of New Yorkers looking for traces of coronavirus, the city’s environmental protection department is finally getting a steady stream of data. of its new wastewater analysis program. What he reveals so far is … basically what we already know.
At this point, the data collected by tracking the virus through the city’s sewers largely serves to confirm the upward trend in COVID-19 transmission demonstrated by the massive volume of individual coronavirus tests that have been administered these past last weeks.
“What we have found over the past six weeks is that in all five arrondissements we are seeing increases and this is roughly in line with what the city’s health department has also seen,” said Thursday in Gothamist the commissioner of the DEP, Vincent Sapienza.
But that does not mean that the analysis of wastewater is a wash. Information gleaned from the sewers will likely become vital once people start getting vaccinated against COVID-19 and fewer people have individual tests for the virus, Sapienza says.
“Wastewater analysis may be a much more powerful tool as 2021 approaches … and [positive COVID-19] rates are getting closer to zero, ”Sapienza said.
For example, he said, if there were little or no fragments of the virus detected “and now we see something in this catchment area, it can allow us to work quickly and react when there is very few ongoing tests. “
Wastewater testing has been used in this way to alert governments to the resurgence of other diseases that have been largely eradicated, such as polio. The city is also studying its potential for tracking seasonal flu.
Nationally, interest in analyzing wastewater as a COVID-19 tracking tool has exploded in recent months and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently announced the creation of a national system wastewater monitoring agency that will collect data from state and local governments. In the scientific community, wastewater testing has been hailed as a method of tracking the virus that is both cost-effective and potentially more equitable and consistent than individual testing efforts, which have been slow to scale up and are still insufficient in many places. Since the coronavirus can show up in a person’s feces before showing any symptoms, wastewater testing also has the potential to detect cases that individual tests would miss.
“We all thought this was a really good way to get a feel for what was going on with the spread in the community because, while some people might or might not get tested, present symptoms or be asymptomatic, if you have COVID -19, you excrete viral fragments every time you use the toilet, ”Sapienza said.
The costs associated with the city’s wastewater testing program have so far been minimal. The city invested $ 250,000 in new equipment, recruited 3.5 new staff (DEP shares staff with academic institutions), and leveraged $ 300,000 in funding through grants and partnerships with academia. , said a DEP spokesperson.
Some sewage analysis experts have suggested that New York City should collect samples from more sites with greater frequency. So far, DEP collects samples twice a week at 14 wastewater treatment sites in the city, making the data from the wastewater analyzes less granular than the district-level rates that the Department of the city health is able to provide on the basis of individual tests. For now, DEP is considering a modest expansion, with the goal of collecting samples from 25 or 30 sites in the city in the future, Sapienza says.
In places where it has been used in a more targeted way, wastewater testing has already demonstrated its ability to help prevent potential outbreaks of COVID-19. For example, researchers at Arizona State University’s Biodesign Institute found traces of coronavirus in the sewage of one of ASU’s dormitories as students moved around this year. This led the school to test everyone who lived or worked in the dormitory and found two asymptomatic students who tested positive. These students were then quarantined, possibly averting an epidemic.
Dr Jay Varma, senior health adviser to Mayor Bill de Blasio, told local media outlet The City that there is a possibility that New York City is using sewage testing to monitor the coronavirus in “a very defined geographic area. Or in a specific installation in the future.
But for now, individual testing remains the dominant mode of tracking the virus.
“In the city, we do so much [individual] testing in all neighborhoods, so we’re seeing our results almost on the same schedule as the city’s health department, ”Sapienza said. “In other municipalities or states where tens of thousands of tests are not performed every day, [wastewater testing] could be a better or faster tool. “
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