The Public Health Agency has awarded $137,392 towards extending a University of Saskatchewan project conducting COVID-19 surveillance in Saskatoon wastewater, and to begin surveillance in five First Nations communities.

Dr. Markus Brinkmann, says they started the project last summer to look into the traces of SARS-CoV-2, the virus causing COVID-19, in Saskatoon wastewater. He explains now they have a partnership with the First Nations communities organized by the Indigenous Technical Services Co-operative. Brinkmann adds smaller communities, including First Nations and Indigenous communities have been hit pretty hard by COVID, so having an early warning of potential outbreaks will be helpful for Public Health response.

Since the virus is shed in feces, monitoring wastewater can be an advance indicator of an outbreak, as infected person shed the virus within 24 hours of being infected.

Brinkmann explains the test to identify COVID-19 traces in wastewater, should also be able to identify any new variants of the virus as the test is very similar to patient swap samples. The big benefit, he adds, is new methods have been developed to identify those variants to see when they pop-up in a community.

The results from Saskatoon data will be used be USask computer scientists for pandemic modelling and to inform public health decision making. Brinkman says they are currently in the process of figuring out how samples and data will be shared in the First Nations communities.

Wastewater will be studied three days a week for 27 weeks in Saskatoon and weekly for 27 weeks in the First Nations community lagoon systems.