photo by: Photo by Alan Olson

These sample tubes are used to collect wastewater and test for the presence of COVID, acting as an early form of detection for the disease.

WHEELING — The testing of wastewater and sewage for the presence of COVID could become a valuable means of early warning of COVID spikes, especially as regular testing becomes a less common occurrence.

Since May 2021, the Wheeling Water Department has been participating in the Wastewater Testing for Community Health in West Virginia program, or WaTCH-WV. Through this program, daily samples of wastewater passing through the treatment plant are taken and analyzed weekly at West Virginia University for traces of COVID-19, which can be detected from waste days ahead of an outbreak.

Wheeling-Ohio County Health Administrator Howard Gamble said the program locally collects the information, but due to the lag time between collection and analysis, the county currently relies more on COVID laboratory testing to track metrics.

“It is a data source that’s provided to us, but it is historical, in the sense that it comes out days later,” he said. “It’s a way to get an early warning that we’ll see a spike, but we’re also still collecting positives from the community by way of lab tests or hospitzation data from the state.”

However, with the current downward trend in both COVID cases and testing, the time may come where wastewater testing serves as the important early warning system for outbreaks.

“How it can be used in the future is if testing drifts off tremendously, but we’re still testing wastewater” he added. “… We are using it as data that provides an early warning to us as a report; it’s not a program … that results in immediate action. Right now, a lot of the data, with the exception of a few areas, are low amounts of COVID being detected.”

According to the WaTCH-WV packet for the week prior to Feb. 27, Wheeling reported the second-lowest concentration of COVID fragments per liter, which is the metric used to test for the presence in wastewater. Wheeling reported 13,644 fragments per liter, while the next-lowest was reported out of Moundsville, which reported 31,516. Wheeling’s five-week high amount, reported the week of Jan. 30, was 327,289, while Moundsville reported 1,045,760 for the week prior to Jan. 23.

The lowest reported in that week was Farmington, at 2,067, while the highest concentration was reported out of Athens, at 10,104,459. The amount currently reported at Athens is, by far, the highest concentration of COVID presented in the document’s five-week window, at nearly ten times the previous week’s reported amount.

Mike Chiazza Sr., operations supervisor of water pollution control with the Wheeling public works department, said Thursday that the testing occurs entirely at the treatment plant and is representative of samples from all across the region.

“In Athens, they’re having an outbreak that they think was from one event, and it can pick up stuff like that,” Chiazza said. “The good thing about this is you don’t actually have to have someone go out and get the test, because everyone’s using their toilets.”

Chiazza said this testing method has the potential to zero in on areas of concern and identify an outbreak before the disease itself manifests.

“… The thing with this testing is that we could drop a sampler in any manhole in the city, for the most part – let’s say you drop it at Wheeling University where they discharge everything to us, to see if there’ll be an outbreak in two weeks,” he said. “… You shed the virus in your waste before you actually come down with symptoms.”

Gamble said that some communities which collect data from various points in their collection system may be able to pinpoint specific areas. However, locally, all testing is collected at the treatment plant.

“It’s a good early warning, but right now, we have the lab system up which is reporting cases that are getting tested,” he said. “If this system stays up, I think it will be beneficial, because our lab testing drifts off as we get more home kits, more people aren’t getting tested because they’re feeling more confident, but we’re still seeing the disease.

“This is when this data set may be more useful for us to say, in this moment, we’re seeing high cases of COVID, and we expect it to increase this week, so we need to stand up testing or put an FYI out there,” he continued. “… It’s a good data set to have.”

Looking ahead, Gamble speculates that the wastewater testing system could have further benefits to public health, such as identifying potential outbreaks of disease such as hepatitis, HIV, and other infectious diseases, as well as signalling the risk of increased COVID spread from nearby communities.

“We can pay attention to the data that’s coming out of Moundsville, just to make sure they’re not seeing something we need to be concerned about or talk about with our other partners,” he said. “It’s a good data set, but the main one we use is laboratory reporting. This is weekly, it’s lagging behind, … but if you already have a main data set, which is confirmed laboratory tests, that’s what we’ve got to go with.

“We enjoy working with the city and with water pollution control, but it is new, and since it is new, it’;s going to take a while to see how this works and how it can be used in the future for X, Y and Z, whether that’s hepatitis, HIV, another outbreak of something in the community,” Gamble added. “… It’s all a lot of unanswered questions, but it’s a good program right now.”