Study Seeks To Determine If Sewers Can Predict Virus Outbreaks

DETROIT, MI — Can the outbreaks of viruses such as the new coronavirus be predicted by first being detected in Michigan's sewers? A research project that began in November 2017 but has since been altered in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic is working to find out.

The Detroit Water and Sewerage Department (DWSD) and Michigan State University began a virus research project in November 2017 to determine if viruses can be detected in the city’s sewer collection system. The idea was to find another mechanism for public health agencies to predict virus outbreaks. The original project was to detect viruses known at the time, and now, with funding and technical expertise from the Great Lakes Water Authority (GLWA), has evolved to trace the coronavirus outbreak.

“Detroit has been at the forefront of testing and providing the community resources during the COVID-19 pandemic,” Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan said. “This project with MSU [launched in 2017] again shows that we have a forward-thinking and collaborative mentality that puts the community first.”

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The MSU study found that viruses — including coronaviruses — can be detected in untreated sewage, the city said in a news release. When that data is joined with healthcare data they can further trace outbreaks. The researchers took the data from the sewage samples and looked at county health data for the same time frame. They discovered that viruses were apparent in the sewer collection system approximately 1-2 weeks prior to seeing increases in reported data at health departments for those same viruses.

“We are excited by the efforts of MSU and the implications this work may have in supporting our response to the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Denise Fair, the City of Detroit Chief Public Health Officer. “I am encouraged and applaud any effort that seeks to enhance the health and wellbeing of our community.”

“When we were approached by Dr. Irene Xagoraraki about her MSU research project in the fall of 2017, we immediately saw the value of using the sewer collection system to aid health officials in virus detection," said DWSD Deputy Director and Chief Engineer Palencia Mobley, P.E., who authorized the department’s participation in the study. "I directed our DWSD staff to give the researchers complete access. This partnership supports our vision of DWSD being an anchor institution that solves problems in the community.”

The study is being led by Irene Xagoraraki, PhD, associate professor of environmental engineering at MSU. Dr. Xagoraraki has an abundance of history studying wastewater and viruses. In 2017, Dr. Xagoraraki received a two-year National Science Foundation (NSF) grant titled: “A Wastewater-Based-Epidemiology System for Early Detection of Viral Outbreaks in Detroit MI.” The grant was followed by a two-year grant from GLWA titled: “SARS-CoV-2 in Detroit: Surveillance and Prediction,” which started in April 2020.

“GLWA’s technical and financial support of this project aligns perfectly with our commitment to protecting the public health,” said John Norton, PhD, director of Energy Research and Innovation at GLWA. “This project has significant implications for providing an advance notice signal of disease incidence in the community. The various use case scenarios we are developing for the virus data found in the environment will have short, medium, and long-term uses. Short-term use may be to provide information regarding immediate response activities and regulations, while a medium-term use may be to help guide detection of infected people, and long-term uses concern general epidemiological work regarding diseases in general.”

The approach that Dr. Xagoraraki is using is focused on community composite sampling. It is a wastewater-based-epidemiology method directly applicable to urban metropolitan areas with centralized wastewater collection, the city said.

“Our approach has the potential to provide warnings earlier than traditional systems focused on clinical diagnostics – rapid or not – which are inherently limited to an after analysis of an outbreak,” Dr. Xagoraraki said. “Our approach goes above and beyond simple surveillance of wastewater.”

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