Water Power
MARCH 1, 2021
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APRIL 5, 2021
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looked to water for answers. Ancient Druids used reflective pools forwater—for clues about where COVID-19 outbreaks are happening. ¶ Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, Jeff Wenzel received a perhaps unenviable work assignment. Wenzel is the chief of the state’s Bureau of Environmental Epidemiology within the Department of Health and Senior Services. At an annual conference, Missouri Department of Natural Resources employees had heard about countries such as the Netherlands conducting sewershed testing for SARS-CoV-2. (A sewershed is an area that drains into a particular wastewater collection system.) Because the genetic material from SARS-CoV-2 can show up in human waste, often before symptoms present, researchers can measure the viral load in wastewater. If levels are high, it might indicate the start of an outbreak or an outbreak that’s getting worse. The DHSS and DNR asked the University of Missouri to convert a lab for the cause, and the three entities launched a pilot for the Sewershed Surveillance Project, a collaborative COVID-19 tracking tool, in May 2020. ¶ Samples can’t tell researchers, say, how many people within a community might have COVID-19. But it can measure how much virus is present. When Wenzel and his team see a spike in viral load, it typically correlates with a spike in cases. “We’re predicting cases about six days ahead of time, and we’re able to do that prediction with about 70 percent probability—so pretty good predictive ability,” Wenzel says. The Sewershed Surveillance Project then makes its data available to local public health agencies and updates a story map online. In 2021, it began testing for variants. In the maps above, the wastewater data shows the rise of different variants before Delta took over.
