Buoyed by the success of wastewater surveillance in finding COVID, Bay Area communities look for other germs.
The COVID-19 virus is not the only troubling microbe that lurks in our poop.
So far, Bay Area counties are reporting only low levels of influenza and RSV, a common virus that causes mild, cold-like symptoms. “A lot of illnesses have similar respiratory symptoms, and it’s helpful to know if there’s an outbreak that’s happening right now and make sure it’s resourced appropriately,” said Wolfe.“We think that there are a lot of opportunities in wastewater to be detecting other pathogens in the community,” said Santa Clara County Public Health Department Director Michael Balliet, who is overseeing the monitoring in partnership with Stanford University.
But the COVID pandemic provided the impetus to build a large new monitoring infrastructure in many communities. By searching for, and then counting, certain coronavirus genes in sewage, scientists can determine the presence of the virus and how widespread it is. That’s how UC San Francisco’s Dr. Charles Chiu discovered the arrival of the omicron variant in California, delaying the state’s reopening plans.
The monitoring effort is run by the California Department of Public Health in a collaborative arrangement with the State Water Resources Control Board, local health departments and academic partners called theA UC Berkeley-based team is also searching for the flu virus in poop, in a partnership called COVID-WEB with a number of Bay Area utilities, including the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission.
SAN JOSE, CA – April 01: Raw sewage is collected in the primary tanks at the San José-Santa Clara Regional Wastewater Facility on April 1, 2022, in San Jose, Calif. Samples of the settled sludge are collected and sent to a lab to test for various viruses including influenza.
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