According to Politico, only a dozen states consistently provide sewage data to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Wastewater Surveillance System. The system, which became live in 2020, collects data on coronavirus levels at sewage treatment plants around the country. However, because most states are not cooperating, the government is unable to obtain a clear picture of how the virus is spreading across the country.
Because it does not rely on people turning up for testing or reporting the results of at-home tests, wastewater is a valuable public health tool for the COVID-19 epidemic. The virus levels in sewage tend to rise before cases do, so it’s an early warning indication of greater transmission. Early indicators of the omicron form were found in sewage, for example, and recent data from early March show increased quantities of the virus even as COVID-19 instances remain low. In the future, wastewater might be used to address other public health issues, such as detecting other viruses such as the flu or monitoring illicit drug use in communities.
However, only California, Colorado, Illinois, Missouri, North Carolina, New York, Ohio, Rhode Island, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and Wisconsin currently have sewage data linked to the National Wastewater Surveillance System (NWSS). Many of those states only have a few sewage treatment plants that consistently report data.
According to a CDC representative, the NWSS can still be valuable even if not used by all states. According to the spokeswoman, it is still useful for places who collect data. However, the discrepancy means it’s yet another unequal pandemic tool — and a patchwork reaction has been a recurrent feature of the United States’ sometimes inadequate response to disease epidemics.
Politico discovered that states have a variety of reasons for not engaging in sewage surveillance programs, including a lack of labor to develop the system. Some people have difficulty getting local sewage treatment plants to agree to collect and send out samples. The CDC collaborated with LuminUltra, a private commercial lab, to aid states, but several were wary of dealing with the corporation.
The sporadic and tardy reaction to the CDC’s demand for additional wastewater monitoring raises the prospect of the United States passing up an opportunity to develop a new public health tool. « Let’s not squander what we’ve done, » Erik Coats, an environmental engineering professor at the University of Idaho, told Politico.
