{"id":6587,"date":"2024-06-06T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-06-06T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/?p=6587"},"modified":"2024-07-19T22:51:30","modified_gmt":"2024-07-20T02:51:30","slug":"small-towns-likely-to-be-big-losers-when-ontario-stops-monitoring-wastewater-expert-says","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/news\/small-towns-likely-to-be-big-losers-when-ontario-stops-monitoring-wastewater-expert-says\/","title":{"rendered":"Small towns likely to be big losers when Ontario stops monitoring wastewater, expert says"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Small towns and rural communities are likely to see the biggest impact when the province stops paying scientists to monitor wastewater for COVID-19 and other illnesses, an expert says. <\/p>\n<p>Also likely to suffer is the scientific community\u2019s ability to learn from rich, robust data that is currently being collected but won\u2019t be after the provincial surveillance program wraps up at the end of July, said Chris deGroot, the lead researcher at the Western University lab that monitors the wastewater in this region.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s safe to assume that with the transition to the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC), there will be a reduction in the total number of sites and that we\u2019re most likely going to see the sites be in larger urban centres,\u201d deGroot said. <\/p>\n<p>The province <a target=\"_blank\" lang=\"en\" href=\"https:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/news\/canada\/toronto\/ontario-covid-19-wastewater-sewage-virus-monitoring-1.7224236\" rel=\"noopener\">told his lab and others across Ontario<\/a> that it would no longer pay them to monitor the level of COVID-19 in the population, a program that measured how much of that virus and others is circulating in the community. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Small towns and rural communities are likely to see the biggest impact when the province stops paying scientists to monitor wastewater for COVID-19 and other illnesses, an expert says. <\/p>\n<p>Also likely to suffer is the scientific community\u2019s ability to learn from rich, robust data that is currently being collected but won\u2019t be after the provincial surveillance program wraps up at the end of July, said Chris deGroot, the lead researcher at the Western University lab that monitors the wastewater in this region.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s safe to assume that with the transition to the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC), there will be a reduction in the total number of sites and that we\u2019re most likely going to see the sites be in larger urban centres,\u201d deGroot said. <\/p>\n<div class=\"more-link-wrapper\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/news\/small-towns-likely-to-be-big-losers-when-ontario-stops-monitoring-wastewater-expert-says\/\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Small towns likely to be big losers when Ontario stops monitoring wastewater, expert says<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[96,18,444,119,309,258,14,12,354,355,220],"class_list":["post-6587","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-canada","tag-covid-19","tag-london","tag-ontario","tag-pro-virus-policies","tag-public-health-agency-of-canada","tag-sars-cov-2","tag-wastewater","tag-wastewater-monitoring","tag-wastewater-surveillance-initiative","tag-western-university","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6587","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6587"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6587\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6592,"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6587\/revisions\/6592"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}