With just days to go until the Ontario government stops funding wastewater surveillance, researchers and residents who use the data fear crucial information about COVID risk is about to go dark, just as a new wave is spreading across Ontario.<\/p>\n
Earlier this year, the Ontario government confirmed that it would stop funding the province\u2019s widely respected wastewater surveillance program after July 31. At the time, a spokesperson said the government was ending the program, believed to cost in the range of $15 million a year, because the federal government was expanding its wastewater surveillance program and it didn\u2019t want to duplicate the efforts.<\/p>\n
The federal government currently operates four testing sites in Ontario \u2014 all in the GTA. It has said it wants to expand its program in Ontario to eight to nine potential sites. The Ontario program gathers surveillance at more than 50 sites.<\/p>\n
With the end of provincial funding fast approaching \u2014 and a summer COVID-19 wave now beginning to surge in the province \u2014 there are growing fears that people who rely on the data on COVID-19 and other diseases will be left in the dark.<\/p>\n
There are reportedly conversations between public health officials about what wastewater surveillance will look like in the future, and an announcement from the Public Health Agency of Canada is anticipated in the coming days, said Rob Delatolla. The uOttawa engineering professor helped kick-start wastewater surveillance efforts in Ontario when his lab became the first in Canada to pick up data on the virus that causes COVID-19 in the city\u2019s wastewater early in the pandemic.<\/p>\n
But with days until the July 31 provincial funding end, he and other researchers have no idea whether the work will continue.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are less than two weeks away from everything going dark,\u201d said Delatolla.<\/p>\n
He noted hospitals, including CHEO in Ottawa and others as well as public health units and the province itself, use wastewater data on COVID-19 and other diseases for planning.<\/p>\n
Ontario Health uses the data to do resource planning, he said, including to more accurately predict the beginning of the seasonal spread of RSV, in order to administer prophylactic vaccines to the most vulnerable babies in the province, said Delatolla.<\/p>\n
He said he fears there will be less information overall going to the public about risk of illness.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt seems like losing wastewater at this time is going to coincide with even less information from other means. Overall, there is going to be less information going out to the public.\u201d<\/p>\n
Peterborough Public Health has said it will continue wastewater surveillance in partnership with Trent University. Ottawa\u2019s medical officer of health, Dr. Vera Etches, is in discussions to find ways to continue, but nothing has been announced.<\/p>\n
But it isn\u2019t just researchers and public health officials who have been expressing concern about the end of Ontario\u2019s wastewater surveillance program \u2014 the largest in the country.<\/p>\n
There are several letter-writing campaigns and petitions calling for the province to continue funding the wastewater program.<\/p>\n
The group called Still COVIDing Canada started an online letters campaign in early June. So far, more than 5,200 emails have been sent to MPPs and municipal councillors about the wastewater program.<\/p>\n
On its website (stillcoviding.ca<\/a>), the advocacy group says: \u201cEnding funding for Ontario\u2019s wastewater surveillance network will have dangerous consequences. We will no longer have a reliable early warning system to inform everyone about the spread of emerging SARS-CoV-2 subvariants and new threats such as avian flu. Without advance warning, hospitals may be completely overwhelmed when new hyperinfectious subvariants emerge and spread exponentially.\u201d<\/p>\n