HSN researchers mark one year of detecting COVID-19 in northern wastewater
This week marked one year since researchers at Health Sciences North started to test wastewater in the region for COVID-19.
Experts at the Health Sciences North Research Institute (HSNRI) are now looking at the results for several communities across the northeast, including Sudbury, North Bay, Sault Ste. Marie and the Porcupine region (Timmins, Kapuskasing and Moosonee.)
They've also been monitoring the output from Laurentian University.
In the last few days, they've noticed a downward trend in COVID-19 levels, which could indicate the northeast has hit a plateau.
"The idea is … everything that will go out of our system is collected in the wastewater and if you have some way to measure it, you can find out the concentration of the thing you want to measure," said researcher Gustavo Ybazeta.
"We are using a technique able to amplify the signal of the remnants of the RNA that's basically the signature of the (COVID-19) virus in the wastewater."
Ybazeta used last month's spike with the Omicron variant as an example.
"Numbers that we obtained through the wastewater, they were going through the roof in some places," he said. "We were seeing numbers up to that we hadn't even seen in previous waves."
It's work that's helping public health officials do their job and is now more important than ever, given how Ontario recently changed its PRC testing guidelines.
"The testing system right now is down at the Kelly Lake wastewater treatment plant, so it's taking all the wastewater from all of Sudbury, all of New Sudbury and we can watch the trends working with that," said Burgess Hawkins, from Public Health Sudbury and Districts.
Public Health Sudbury and Districts, the City of Greater Sudbury and the researchers are working collaboratively to try and come up with a way where they can publish the results in a manner that's easy to understand.
Several cities have already started to routinely publish findings, including Ottawa.
"The trend lines are pretty obvious but they don't always give you an A equals B correlation," said Hawkins, who said the health unit wants to see the data published.
In the past year, the team at Health Sciences North made a lot of improvements to the procedure with Ontario's consortium of testing sites. For example, what used to take them 10-12 hours to get results, may take 6-8 hours now.
"We share our best results and techniques with other labs and look at how other labs are doing their results," said Ybazeta. "We're trying to produce the best measurement of this signature and we're getting better."
"People are getting very tired in the lab because it's been a long year, but we're very happy to share this data, to do what we can to beat this pandemic," he added.
CTVNews.ca Top Stories
Harvey Weinstein's 2020 rape conviction overturned by N.Y. appeals court
New York's highest court on Thursday overturned Harvey Weinstein's 2020 rape conviction, reversing a landmark ruling of the #MeToo era in determining the trial judge improperly allowed women to testify about allegations against the ex-movie mogul that weren't part of the case.
BREAKING Honda to get up to $5B in govt help for EV battery, assembly plants
Honda is set to build an electric vehicle battery plant next to its Alliston, Ont., assembly plant, which it is retooling to produce fully electric vehicles, all part of a $15-billion project that is expected to include up to $5 billion in public money.
MPP Sarah Jama asked to leave Ontario legislature for wearing keffiyeh
MPP Sarah Jama was asked to leave the Legislative Assembly of Ontario by House Speaker Ted Arnott on Thursday for wearing a keffiyeh, a garment that is banned at Queen’s Park.
CTE: Researchers believe widespread brain injury may contribute to veteran suicide rate
Researchers are working to better understand if some Canadian military veterans may be suffering from Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, also known as CTE -- a disorder previously found in the brains of professional football and hockey players after their death.
1 arrested in northern Alberta during public shelter order
Residents of John D'Or Prairie, a community on the Little Red River Cree Nation in northern Alberta, were told to take shelter Thursday morning during a police operation.
Secret $70M Lotto Max winners break their silence
During a special winner celebration near their hometown, Doug and Enid shared the story of how they discovered they were holding a Lotto Max ticket worth $70 million and how they kept this huge secret for so long.
Remains from a mother-daughter cold case were found nearly 24 years later, after a deathbed confession from the suspect
A West Virginia father is getting some sense of closure after authorities found the remains of his young daughter and her mother following a deathbed confession from the man believed to have fatally shot them nearly two decades ago.
New deep-water channel allows first ship to pass Key bridge wreckage in Baltimore
The first cargo ship passed through a newly opened deep-water channel in Baltimore on Thursday after being stuck in the harbor since the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed four weeks ago, halting most maritime traffic through the city's port.
First in Canada procedure performed at London, Ont. hospital
A London man has become the first person in Canada to receive a robotic assisted surgery on his spine. Dave Myeh suffered from debilitating, chronic back pain that led to sciatica in his right now and extreme pain in his lower back.