COVID-19 in wastewater early predictor of surge in Cleveland area – WJW FOX 8 News Cleveland

CLEVELAND (WJW)Testing of wastewater at local treatment plants could provide a grim picture of what lies ahead in the coming days with respect to COVID-19.

The Ohio Department of Health tests water samples taken from plants across the state for the presence of genetic material that indicates the presence of the virus in the community,

This kind of testing allows us to test the entire community with one sample, one analysis versus testing everyone individually, said Scott Broski, the superintendent of environmental services at the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District.

On Tuesday, the Ohio Department of Health sent a notice to the Cuyahoga County Board of Health warning that the million gene copy per day values taken from the Easterly and Westerly water treatment plants in the Cleveland area are the highest recorded to date for those two plants.

Though not an exact science, the results typically correspond with and may foreshadow the experience with COVID-19 in the surrounding community. That could indicate that health care providers can start to see an expected post-Thanksgiving spike in COVID-19 cases in the coming days.

Everyone that contracts COVID-19 starts shedding the virus. Some of us are asymptomatic, some of us have very mild symptoms and may not even recognize it as COVID-19, some become very ill and require hospitalization, but everyone that has the virus is then shedding the virus, Broski said.

So we get a picture of the whole community and we get it before they may actually become ill so we have the ability to use the data as an early warning system, or as a prediction as to what we may see develop case wise in the coming days, he added.

Graphs published by the Ohio Department of Health show an upward trajectory in the presence of the genetic material in wastewater samples, which can be impacted at different plants by different variables, including industrial use and runoff from rain or snow.

Though he does not interpret or publish the data, Broski does follow it very closely and said the historical values of the presence of COVID at each plant needs to be viewed in isolation with the trends at that particular plant.

The difficulty here with wastewater is that, you know, our plants they dont have community boundaries, they dont have county boundaries. We serve a wide area and people may travel to come to a hospital and get tested and whatnot so you know what is actually happening in our service area may not be an exact representation of that service area because of people travelling in and out coming to doctors offices and what not but it is an indicator, Broski said.

With the rising number of hospitalizations and positive tests making Cuyahoga County at risk of turning purple on the states COVID chart, the fact that the trend from the wastewater samples has been on the rise comes as no surprise to him.

It doesnt surprise me. I think that we have been seeing the surge in cases statewide and in the area for weeks now so to see the trends moving in the upward direction in both the viral gene copies per liter and million gene copies per day. It really is just kind of confirming what we have seen from the testing that has occurred from those presenting with the illness.

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COVID-19 in wastewater early predictor of surge in Cleveland area - WJW FOX 8 News Cleveland