Covid-19 wastewater surveillance programme moves to next stage

13th November 2020

By: Natasha Odendaal

Creamer Media Senior Deputy Editor

     

Font size: - +

The Water Research Commission’s (WRC’s) emerging national wastewater surveillance programme has reached a milestone as it moves from the first-phase proof-of-concept into a ‘catalysing’ pilot phase.

The WRC launched the first stage towards the development of a national wastewater surveillance programme in May to track the prevalence of the coronavirus in communities through wastewater surveillance and monitoring.

The tracing of the Covid-19 spread in sewer wastewater treatment systems and nonsewer sanitation systems provides information that could track and trace and signal hotspots of community transmissions in developing regions that may not be able to afford or implement mass screening programmes to uncover new infections and provide early warning of the resurgence of the outbreak.

The first phase covered sample design, testing sampling protocol and preliminary characterisation and analysis of the risk of infection in wastewater treatment plants.

The proof-of-concept phase, based on a continuous five weeks of weekly sampling of several wastewater treatment plants in hotspot metropolitans in Gauteng, the Western Cape, the Free State, KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape, led to the detection of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, or SARS-CoV-2, ribonucleic acid fragments in faeces within the wastewater and sanitation environment. No infective strain has been confirmed as yet.

“The results are giving us enough motivation and rationale to actually start expanding and also applying some of the methods that we have already tweaked and fine-tuned so that we can expand the sampling, include more municipalities, and pair this with capacity building as we bring more laboratories on board towards building up national coverage,” says WRC drinking water quality and treatment research manager Dr Nonhlanhla Kalebaila.

The WRC completed the proof-of-concept phase in collaboration with the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, the University of Pretoria and Waterlab.

“This is a turning point in our efforts around moving from the first phase in establishing the science and the methodologies into this pilot phase of organising the logistics around a more proper wastewater-based surveillance initiative,” adds WRC water use and waste management executive manager Jay Bhagwan, kicking off the launch of the second phase of the national wastewater surveillance programme in South Africa.

In the second phase, a wider network for pilot-scale testing will be implemented across predefined communities in South Africa, continues National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD) Centre for Vaccines and Immunology head Dr Melinda Suchard.

The pilot phase of the national scale-up in the next six to 12 months will target urban metropolitan areas, including several wastewater plants throughout Johannesburg, Tshwane, Ekurhuleni, eThekwini, the City of Cape Town, Port Elizabeth and Buffalo City.

Initially, ten wastewater sites in Johannesburg have been selected: six in Tshwane, eight in Ekurhuleni, ten in the City of Cape Town, four in Nelson Mandela Bay and four in Buffalo City.

The NICD, in partnership with the WRC will coordinate the network of participating laboratories, while the Department of Health (DoH), in collaboration with municipalities and other stakeholders, will be responsible for site selection in each province, she says.

The data will be provided to the National Covid-19 Incident Management Team at the DoH.

“This is a very significant development for South Africa and puts us among the global leaders in science and development of Covid-19 surveillance. This outcome is supported by several other initiatives in the country confirming this situation,” the WRC says.

“More so this is evidence and confidence that wastewater and water quality surveillance can complement the national individual testing programme and has thus created the impetus to move into a pilot initiative.”

The third and final phase, following the conclusion of the pilot, will, over the next one to three years, comprise national wastewater surveillance and include a full-scale national sewershed surveillance, data analysis, integration, communication and research with sector and government support.

The concept of screening municipal wastewater and environmental water quality as an epidemiological tool for viruses has historically been used to help inform broader infectious disease epidemiological surveillance and mitigation efforts globally.

Environmental surveillance has also been used and recommended for other infections, such as typhoid, early warning of hepatitis A and norovirus outbreaks, as well as for antimicrobial resistance, with modelling techniques used to assist both the design and interpretation of those efforts.

Wastewater-based epidemiology is also commonly used in the surveillance of licit and illicit drugs and various chemical contaminants which may impact human health.

“We need to use this as a model going forward, not only for the Covid-19 outbreak, but also for other pollutants, for chemicals and for measuring disease burdens as a result of water quality and other wastewater and environmental health surveillance,” adds NICD deputy director Dr Natalie Mayet.

It will also provide decision-making support and determine the timing and severity of public health interventions to mitigate the spread of the virus and better anticipate the likely impact and inform hospital readiness and the necessity of public health interventions.

Further, the project will assist in tracking the effectiveness of interventions and provide an early warning system for potential re-emergence.

Edited by Martin Zhuwakinyu
Creamer Media Senior Deputy Editor

Comments

The content you are trying to access is only available to subscribers.

If you are already a subscriber, you can Login Here.

If you are not a subscriber, you can subscribe now, by selecting one of the below options.

For more information or assistance, please contact us at subscriptions@creamermedia.co.za.

Option 1 (equivalent of R125 a month):

Receive a weekly copy of Creamer Media's Engineering News & Mining Weekly magazine
(print copy for those in South Africa and e-magazine for those outside of South Africa)
Receive daily email newsletters
Access to full search results
Access archive of magazine back copies
Access to Projects in Progress
Access to ONE Research Report of your choice in PDF format

Option 2 (equivalent of R375 a month):

All benefits from Option 1
PLUS
Access to Creamer Media's Research Channel Africa for ALL Research Reports, in PDF format, on various industrial and mining sectors including Electricity; Water; Energy Transition; Hydrogen; Roads, Rail and Ports; Coal; Gold; Platinum; Battery Metals; etc.

Already a subscriber?

Forgotten your password?

MAGAZINE & ONLINE

SUBSCRIBE

RESEARCH CHANNEL AFRICA

SUBSCRIBE

CORPORATE PACKAGES

CLICK FOR A QUOTATION