CASPER, Wyo. — A University of Wyoming research team has received an $800,000 grant from the Wyoming Department of Health “to test effluent from Wyoming communities for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19,” UW said on Monday, Oct. 26.
The Wyoming Public Health Laboratory (WPHL) has been working with locations across the state to test for the prevalence of COVID-19 in wastewater. The “Wyoming COVID-19 Wastewater Monitor” uses data from testing at these locations to model the potential prevalence of COVID-19 in different communities.
UW says that testing wastewater “could show disease trends and even predict outbreaks days before they can be identified by other types of testing.”
Bledar Bisha, an associate professor in UW’s Department of Animal Science and Sarah Collins, an assistant professor in UW’s Department of Zoology and Physiology, will collaborate on UW’s effort to test wastewater samples “from up to 100 sites several times a week once the project is running.”
“More than 7,000 samples, over the course of one year, will be tested in Bisha’s laboratory in animal science and half in the Wyoming Public Health Laboratory (WPHL) in Cheyenne,” UW says.
Alexys McGuire, a graduate student at UW, will lead the project with assistance from undergraduate students and a laboratory technician, according to UW.
“The research group is working closely with public health officials, especially Noah Hull and Wanda Manley at WPHL, and will plan to share the COVID-19 data,” UW says. “Samples will be taken before the influent enters a wastewater treatment facility.”
“McGuire’s group will use polymerase chain reaction (PCR) testing to detect gene sequences unique to the virus.”
The COVID-19 virus tends to spread via larger droplets when individuals are in close contact through breathing, talking or sneezing, Bisha explained to UW. However, “evidence has mounted supporting airborne transmission via aerosols,” UW adds.
While COVID-19 is generally thought of as a respiratory illness, Bisha explains that the virus can also be present in the gastrointestinal tract and that people can shed the virus through their feces.
“So, that’s why we look in wastewater,” Bisha said in the release. “But the interesting thing about looking at wastewater is that you’re likely to catch both symptomatic and asymptomatic cases, because the disease is transmitted by those who are asymptomatic but, sometimes, clinical testing won’t pick up those cases.”
Testing wastewater can indicate trends in where COVID-19 is spiking in the state, though it cannot determine the exact number of cases in a community.
“The tool can’t be fully quantitative, but it’s fairly useful if you use it to assess trends,” Bisha said in the release. “Where this tool has been used in the past, it’s been possible to assess an outbreak at least a week before clinical cases started to appear.”
Testing wastewater was used to detect polio cases in the 1930s, according to UW. It has also been used to track the prevalence of diseases in developing countries.
“It’s proved to be an effective method to look at trends of infectious disease in the past — and not only infectious diseases, but even other unconventional applications, such as wastewater testing to look at opioid use in communities, for the benefit of public health,” Bisha told UW. “The best way to do this is to try to concentrate the viral nucleic acids, which in the case of this virus is RNA, not DNA.”
“You are extracting the target RNA that is indicative of the virus, and then you purify that and run the PCR, making many, many copies (millions), and you’re detecting them in real time.”
The PCR testing would not be impacted by mutations to the COVID-19 virus since it targets RNA.
“The genes are very, very important genes for survival, important for the attachment to the target cells, so they are not likely to mutate,” Bisha says.
The project is important both for research and as a means to help monitor the spread of COVID-19 during the pandemic, according to Bisha.
“We feel excited to provide yet another tool to monitor the prevalence of the SARS-CoV-2 in our communities and help in the greater effort to curtail the outbreaks of SARS-CoV-2,” he said in the release.
