Province shutting down wastewater surveillance in Waterloo Region

The Region of Waterloo’s most effective tool in tracking COVID-19 and other respiratory infections is ceasing operations at the end in July.

The University of Waterloo’s provincially-funded wastewater surveillance is ending, coinciding with the Ontario government’s decision to wind down its own program. 

Wastewater surveillance was first introduced in 2021.

Mark Servos, the Canada research chair in water quality protection, has been spearheading wastewater monitoring at the University of Waterloo since 2020.

“We’re monitoring hundreds of thousands of people at the same time with the same sample,” he explained to CTV News. “There’s been hundreds of variants that we’ve been able to isolate.”

UW has been the only surveillance site in Waterloo Region, gathering samples from facilities in Kitchener and Cambridge with weekly updates that get reported on the provincial and regional dashboard.

Throughout the pandemic, Ontario collected data from surveillance sites across seven sub-regions.

Now that the program is ending on July 31, so too will most of those websites.

“Now we’ll have a weakened perspective of what’s happening in the province,” Servos added. 

The province said its stepping back to make way for a nationwide testing program. The Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Parks tells CTV News “to avoid duplication, Ontario is working to support this expansion while winding down the provincial wastewater surveillance initiative.”

The Public Health Agency of Canada, meanwhile, said it’s currently testing at four wastewater plants in Toronto with plans to expand into four other cities.

Experts fear the lack of surveillance sites across small and remote communities will effect our ability to gather information quickly and accurately.

“Are we only focusing on major cities or are we also focusing on smaller communities?” asked Zahid Butt, an assistant professor of the University of Waterloo’s School of Public Health Sciences.

Servos argues wastewater surveillance’s ability to detect future pandemics, as well as influenza A, B, and RSV, make it a valuable tool that shouldn’t be shutdown in smaller markets.

“Those are important to the hospitalization and the impact and decisions that public health officers will have to make,” he explained. “They will have no ability to know what’s happening or anticipate what’s going to happen.”

Once the University of Waterloo’s program closes for good, the Region of Waterloo Public Health says surveillance data can still be found on the Government of Canada’s wastewater dashboard.