The researchers at the University of Calgary who created the very successful COVID-19 wastewater monitoring program and online COVID tracker are persuaded of wastewater’s potential as a public health tool, and they are not alone.
Genome Canada, in collaboration with Genome Alberta, has funded the research group $2 million under their Genomic Applications Partnership Program (GAPP) to examine the possibility of wastewater monitoring to discover and track additional viruses. Alberta Health, Genome Quebec, and the Government of Canada have each contributed $4 million to the study.
“Our Genome Canada project will use our wastewater testing platform to study and develop monitoring for other pathogens, while continuing to track COVID-19,” says Dr. Casey Hubert, PhD, professor of geomicrobiology in the Faculty of Science. “Wastewater samples offer an inclusive and non-biased way to study population health, making this monitoring an economical and effective tool for early detection of infection transmission, enabling mitigation and prevention of outbreaks.”
Extent of viruses in wastewater and what their presence means not fully known yet
A team led by Hubert, Kevin Frankowski (Advancing Canadian Water Assets), and Dr. Michael Parkins, MD (Cumming School of Medicine) was laser focused on gathering data to help answer key questions being asked by public health officials in the early stages of the wastewater monitoring program, fuelled by the urgency of the pandemic. Are people becoming ill? Where? Is the number of cases increasing or decreasing?
Researchers may now pose some bigger picture questions three years later, with strong tools in place, like the popular COVID tracker hosted at the Cumming School of Medicine Centre for Health Informatics. What more can we discover in the wastewater? Is this information beneficial? What else can we do?
“People have been checking wastewater for evidence of enteric viruses found in the gastrointestinal system, like norovirus and poliovirus, for decades, but you would not necessarily expect to find respiratory viruses,” explains Dr. Maria Bautista, PhD. “Discovering that we can use wastewater to monitor respiratory viruses like SARS-CoV-2 has broadened our thinking about what we can observe and track using this method.”
Bautista, a virologist and senior research associate at the Faculty of Science, is part of the team that is utilizing “the power of genomics” to determine what else is present in wastewater samples. They will seek genetic evidence of major viruses such as measles, mumps, and human papillomavirus (HPV), among others.
“All” may appear to be a lot, and it is. Water samples include a wide range of genetic material, much of which is irrelevant to researchers. Human and plant DNA, parasites, bacteria, and viruses that do not infect humans, as well as the tiny fragments of genetic information Bautista is hunting for, dubbed “genomic targets,” are all in the mix.
“Metagenomics will give us an inventory of everything in the wastewater,” Bautista says. “We need to sort through all of it, identify the viral information, clean it up, and then figure out what viruses we have.”
The researchers will gradually optimize their technique to focus on the genetic targets of greatest interest. “There’s a lot of data analysis, but that’s part of the fun.” “You never know what you’re going to find,” she says.
Learning from the past to prepare for the future
The team is optimistic that wastewater monitoring will provide public health officials and individuals with proof to utilize in the event of future viral outbreaks. The primary purpose of the initiative is to include wastewater monitoring into Alberta’s public health strategy.
“As we saw with the COVID-19 pandemic, early warning surveillance systems that governments and public health authorities can respond to are extremely valuable,” Hubert says. “A critical component of this project is developing sample processing methods for viruses deemed high priority by our clinical partners, as we have already done with influenza and RSV.” In 2022, influenza and RSV (respiratory syncytial virus) were included to the COVID tracker online.
“Developing more versatile methods that cover a broad range of genomic targets will better prepare Alberta Health to deal with future epidemics, pandemics, and even endemic disease using wastewater monitoring,” Hubert adds.
Source: University of Calgary
