Recent Advances in Waste Water Surveillance to Monitor Pathogens

Presented by Tyler Radniecki, Oregon State University
Contact Information: [email protected]

ABSTRACT

Wastewater surveillance has shown tremendous potential as a public health tool to monitor the spread of infectious diseases, locate infection “hot spots” within a community at the neighborhood or building scales and identify pathogen variants present in a community. Wastewater surveillance does not suffer from many of the limitations and biases of traditional clinical disease surveillance including testing avoidance, missing asymptomatic infections, or misdiagnosing less severe infections. Additionally, unlike clinical surveillance, wastewater surveillance can monitor an entire population with a single sample, greatly reducing costs. However, even with the many benefits of wastewater surveillance, proper sample collection, storage and processing is critical to achieving accurate results. This presentation will discuss the many challenges of setting up a wastewater surveillance network including choosing sampling locations, sampling techniques (e.g., composite vs grab vs passive sampling), storage conditions (i.e., temperature and time) and laboratory controls to prevent and identify cross-contamination events or molecular diagnostic inhibition.