How Much Virus Is in the Water? Narragansett Bay Commission Participates in National COVID-19 Study

How Much Virus Is in the Water? Narragansett Bay Commission Participates in National COVID-19 Study

The Narragansett Bay Commission has been accepted to participate in a COVID-19 study conducted by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) and the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC).

The study is designed to rapidly monitor 100 million people across the United States through wastewater surveillance for monitoring the COVID-19 epidemic and to identify best practices for wastewater SARS-CoV-2 assessment and subsequent data analytics across the country.

Questions about coronavirus transmission via wastewater began in May of 2020 as the World Health Organization began to raise questions.

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In October, MIT reported that the university began piloting a wastewater testing program as a new tool to help keep the campus community safe this semester.

"In a project that will run through the fall semester, wastewater from seven buildings on campus will be tested each day for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. The project is designed to determine if wastewater testing can be an effective early warning system for COVID-19 outbreaks on campus, and is being evaluated as a complementary tool in the Institute’s response to the pandemic, along with clinical testing, contact tracing, and other measures," reported MIT.

 

How Much Virus Is in the Water

The NBC’s Bucklin Point Wastewater Treatment Facility in East Providence is participating in Phase I of the study, during which raw wastewater influent is tested twice weekly for six weeks. Phase I will assess 10% of the US population through wastewater monitoring. Monitoring began December 27, 2020.

The second phase will enroll additional treatment plants in order to ramp up to the goal of surveilling 30% of the US population. All data will be compiled and relayed to communities by HHS, with the goal of returning data as soon as possible for local health departments to make quick, actionable decisions.

“Wastewater treatment has always been essential to public health, protecting our citizens from diseases and epidemics like dysentery and cholera,” said NBC Chairman Vincent Mesolella. “It’s a natural progression of our public health mission to contribute to the fight again COVID. We are very proud to be a part of this study providing valuable data to our country’s leaders during this challenging time.”

A paper published in Nature reported, "The health risks of COVID-19 via waterborne transmission may be greater than initially assumed, and wastewater should be further studied as a potential pathway for COVID-19 transmission. Evidence for the presence of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in wastewater systems is accumulating around the world. The large number of infected individuals in the current pandemic together with the high infectivity of SARS-CoV-2 could present a new challenge for wastewater treatment and calls for future assessment of the risk for transmission via wastewater reuse. Such risks might be expected to be highest in areas with high population density, direct exposure to aerosolized wastewater as well as regions that lack adequate wastewater collection, treatment and disinfection."

"Extensive research into the frequency of detecting the infectious SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater is urgently needed to gain:

(1) critical information on the abundance of viruses in raw wastewater, treated wastewater and the receiving environment, which can be used to generate a quantitative risk assessment;

(2) information on removal efficiencies through the wastewater treatment train;

(3) disinfection requirements according to virus loading and transmission via WWTPs to ensure complete removal of SARS-CoV-2 for wastewater reuse; and (4) epidemic surveillance for policymakers on the outbreak, extent and prevalence of the COVID-19 pandemic within the community," wrote the report published in August.