An auto sampler machine being used in Medicine Hat's waste water treatment plant to collect a daily sample from the sewer that the University of Alberta will test for traces of COVID-19. -- SUBMITTED PHOTO
gslade@medicinehatnews.com@MHNGillianSlade
A sampling of water we flush down the toilet or sink in Medicine Hat will soon be tested for traces of COVID-19 and could potentially reveal “hot spots” before people test positive for the virus.
Within the next week Medicine Hat will begin dispatching samples, taken five days a week, from our sewer waste water for testing at the University of Alberta.
John Michalopoulos, manager of treatment plants – environmental utilities for the City, says early on in the pandemic municipalities across Canada talked of this taking place in other parts of the world.
Michalopoulos says Holland did some early testing of sewer waste water that attraction attention.
According to media reports, on March 5 a waste water treatment plant in Amersfoort (southeast of Amsterdam) found traces of genetic material of COVID-19 in that city’s waste water. This was one week after the first confirmed case of COVID-19 was identified in the Netherlands. In late March scientists there had found that the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus is often excreted in an infected person’s bowel movement.
It is important to note that waste water is not a means of transmitting the COVID-19.
Municipalities have had many discussions since then and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research has been encouraging municipalities to get on board.
Last week Michalopoulos was in contact with the University of Alberta indicating that Medicine Hat wanted to participate in the testing of waste water.
There is already an auto sampler machine at the waste water treatment plant in Medicine Hat that can collect samples of water every few hours. At the end of the day it produces a sample that is representative of the day.
Some additional equipment that is required should arrive in Medicine Hat later this week, he said.
“We will be collecting a daily composite sample five days a week, freezing them and shipping them to the U of A Department of Lab Medicine and Pathology in Edmonton for analysis,” said Michalopoulos.
This process will continue “for the foreseeable future”. In this initial stage it is considered a “trial” and changes could be made to the protocol, including perhaps even shipping a sample every day.
He is careful to point out that the water treatment plant that provides the water that we drink and use in our homes does not have traces of COVID in it. The water being tested is what has flowed down our toilets and sinks into the sewer system.
In some countries, Italy and Spain for example, testing of waste water has been done on samples preserved from more than a year ago. It has helped to indicate how long COVID-19 was in those communities before people were being tested.
There is one sample from March 2018, more than a year ago, in Barcelona Spain that showed traces of COVID-19. Additional testing is still taking place to verify that result.
Michalopoulos says Medicine Hat does not have older frozen samples of waste water that would be suitable for such testing.
