In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) established a National Wastewater Surveillance System (Surveillance Program), a public health surveillance system for COVID-19. The CDC defines a public health surveillance system as an ongoing, systematic collection, analysis, and interpretation of health-related data essential to planning, implementation, and evaluation of public health practice.
Individuals infected with SARS-CoV-2, both asymptomatic and symptomatic, shed the virus in stool that ends up in the sewage system. Fortunately, SARS-CoV-2 has not been shown to remain infectious in wastewater, but its genetic material can be detected and used as an indicator of the presence of COVID-19 in a community.
In California, the Department of Public Health (CDPH), State Water Resources Control Board, OC San and four other wastewater treatment agencies have been leading the state’s wastewater surveillance efforts also known as Wastewater Based Epidemiology since December of 2020. To support the CDC’s Surveillance Program and to be transparent, OC San analyzes the raw influent that comes in from throughout Orange County and provides the data to the CDPH three times a week.
After the data is reviewed and interpreted by the CDC, the information is shared with public health officials and stakeholders to better understand the extent of COVID-19 infection in communities.
