City of Thunder Bay ramps up wastewater COVID-19 testing as cases rise
CBC
The City of Thunder Bay is increasing its rate of testing wastewater for COVID-19 as cases climb in the community in northwestern Ontario.
Thunder Bay is among a number of municipalities in the province that are submitting wastewater samples to labs for analysis.
Water samples taken at Thunder Bay's municipal pollution control plant go to the Great Lakes Institute for Environmental Research at the University of Windsor.
Thunder Bay chief chemist Ian Morgan said while the city did slow its sample rates in recent months due to a lack of COVID-19 cases in the city, that changed this week.
"With this current wave going on, we decided to ramp up for more data points, and are sampling the wastewater three times a week," Morgan said.
"At the beginning of the surveillance, we did see a little blip in February and March, which correlated nicely with the reported cases. Then when [case numbers] dropped down to essentially nothing, the data was negligible.
"However, now, when we're starting to see the cases come back up, the data is rising and correlating," he said.
Mike McKay, executive director of the Great Lakes Institute for Environmental Research, said samples are received by the lab the day after they're taken and analysis starts immediately.
"Samples are kept cold," McKay said. "The viral signal can persist probably for a week or longer when it's kept cold, so we're not worried about about the signal degrading.
"But it's important that we would be able to process samples as quickly as possible to get the information back."
That information is then provided to public health units to help them with the pandemic response, McKay said.
For example, some municipalities have used targeted wastewater testing to track cases in specific locations, like hospitals or long-term care facilities.
The University of Windsor also monitored wastewater at one of its residence halls, he said. In some cases, the samples showed COVID-19 in the water, which in turn led to broader testing and quarantining of asymptomatic individuals.
The process is especially important now, McKay said, due to a shortage of tests in Ontario.
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