Somerville Monitoring Wastewater To Detect COVID-19

SOMERVILLE, MA — Somerville is launching a community wastewater testing program to monitor for the coronavirus and provide earlier detection of increased spread of COVID-19, Mayor Joseph Curtatone announced Thursday. City officials said they believe the program is the first of its kind in Massachusetts.

The city partnered with Asst. Professor Ameet Pinto of Northeastern University's Civil and Environmental Engineering Department and Stantec, the city's on-call engineering firm for sewer work and design. The program is designed to reveal COVID-19 hotspots up to one to two weeks earlier than current individual testing.

"Adding wastewater testing to our COVID-19 interventions is like adding a smoke alarm to your house. It provides a warning before the problem gets out of control," Mayor Joseph Curtatone said in a statement. "This new tool will greatly enhance our ability to detect and contain COVID-19 clusters in Somerville as they emerge. We all know now that widespread testing and contact tracing is critical to controlling the spread of the virus, and the earlier and the more comprehensive the testing is, the better we can reduce virus spread. This program will give us a head start."

In collaboration with the city's emergency response leadership, the initiative was led by the Infrastructure and Asset Management team, which is typically concerned with building and maintaining the city's sewers.

The project will also sequence the genes of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, which tends to accumulate mutations over time and may provide useful information on the origin of COVID-19 clusters. This data will be shared with researchers and the CDC wastewater testing program. The MWRA is conducting wastewater testing on a regional level as well.

"We are all hands on deck here. The Mayor asked my team to reach out to companies doing wastewater testing for the coronavirus this spring, but the sampling logistics were restrictive, and the costs were prohibitive," Rich Raiche, director of Infrastructure and Asset Management, said in a statement. "So we began looking at other options and fortunately connected with Professor Pinto, who has the lab equipment and capability to do this testing affordably via resources at Northeastern University. Meanwhile, Stantec is already working on improvements to our sewers, and they were eager to step up and support the testing by managing the sampling effort."

Testing is expected to begin this week. Each week, up to ten samples will be collected and locations will vary. Areas expected to be initially prioritized include the Tufts University neighborhood, areas with high concentrations of vulnerable residents or high density, and public schools once on-site classes begin. The approach is expected to evolve over time.

"By applying our in-depth knowledge of Somerville’s sewer system, we’re able to help public health officials connect the dots between the lab results and the neighborhoods contributing to these outcomes," David VanHoven, senior principal with Stantec, said in a statement. "This detection tool will identify neighborhood trends to support the city’s mission in mitigating the risk of COVID-19 in the community."

By nature, wastewater testing results are anonymous. The testing is not able to identify individuals as sources. All privacy protocols and measures similar to those for handling individual test results reported to the Somerville Board of Health by the Commonwealth will also be adhered to.

Wastewater testing is the latest addition to Somerville’s COVID-19 Mitigation Plan. Among other initiatives in collaboration with a range of partners, Somerville announced communitywide free COVID-19 testing for residents in April, joined Revere and other cities to offer safe quarantine and isolation options, launched a free mobile testing unit in June, distributed 100,000 free face masks to community members, and instituted face-covering requirements before the statewide order.