wastewater surveillance from municipalities a little more as a potential alternative to track viral activity.Last March, the Ford government invested in just over a dozen research and academic institutions to create a surveillance network to test wastewater samples taken from communities across Ontario.“Together with clinical and public health data, wastewater monitoring can help local public health units identify potential COVID-19 outbreaks and enable more timely decisions about how and where to mobilize resources in response,” environment minister Jeff Yurek said after handing over $12 million in wastewater collecting initiatives.
Toronto launches pilot project to collect COVID-19 data from wastewater Two years into the program, an estimated 75 per cent of Ontario’s population is now within the Ministry of the Environment’s (MOE) coverage area for the Wastewater Surveillance Initiative (WSI).In recent weeks, the director of the Ontario Science Advisory Table Dr.
Peter Juni and the province’s chief medical officer Dr. Kieron Moore have often cited the measure in reporting trends in COVID detection.Toronto Public Health’s medical officer of health revealed in mid-January staff would be collaborating with academic partners to expand on the tool after discovering connections with the city’s clinical COVID numbers.In Ottawa, the measure has been successful enough that the local public health unit regularly reports the data on its COVID-19 dashboard.But not all medical officers are singing the praises of the measurement.Hamilton’s medical officer of health on numerous occasions has publicly said the data “hasn’t been as useful” and “doesn’t correlate as well” with other COVID data sources the city’s public health unit has.