Wastewater monitoring might be an efficient tool for global disease surveillance

Wastewater monitoring could act as an early warning system to assist countries higher prepare for future pandemics, based on a brand new study.

A global collaboration involving Murdoch Kid’s Research Institute, The Rockefeller Foundation, Mathematica and the UK’s Health Security Agency has make clear how different countries monitor wastewater during infectious diseases outbreaks and where improvements could possibly be made.

For the study, samples from treatment plants, rivers, wetlands and open drains were reported from 43 nations, spanning six continents, during 2022.

Murdoch Kid’s and University of Melbourne Professor Julie Bines, who worked with colleagues from Universitas Gadjah Mada in Yogjakarta, said the continuing COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the necessity for robust and resilient disease surveillance systems.

“Despite a long time of funding being directed into global infectious disease surveillance and warning signs that got here from each traditional and non-traditional data sources, much of the world was caught off-guard by the rapid spread of SARS-CoV-2,” she said.

“The pandemic could potentially have unfolded otherwise if there had been a dedicated surveillance system that was on constant alert, transmitting details about pathogens circulating within the environment across the globe. With such a system in place, experts could have identified SARS-CoV-2 much more quickly. Even when pandemic spread was inevitable, health-care systems could have higher prepared for the fallout with more advanced notice, saving many lives.”

The research, published in The Lancet Global Health, found monitoring for SARS-CoV-2 variants was more common in high income countries (59 per cent) than lower middle-income countries (13 per cent). Most data was shared internally and with partner organisations but not publicly and there have been no comprehensive guidelines to advertise ethical wastewater monitoring practices.

We found testing for COVID-19 in wastewater was an efficient and objective method to measure where the disease was spreading, with most samples processed in lower than 4 days.”

Professor Julie Bines, Murdoch Kid’s and University of Melbourne

Professor Bines said with ongoing attention and investment, wastewater surveillance could possibly be used as a world early warning system for outbreaks of infectious disease.

“To really advance wastewater monitoring, we want a world framework that features flexible testing, enhanced data capture and reporting, in addition to ethical monitoring that doesn’t further marginalise disadvantaged communities,” she said.

“This manner we could discover a spread of current and future health threats like cholera, mpox (formerly monkeypox), influenza and typhoid, before they grab a community. But we want support to develop systems that may accurately capture, interpret and communicate data from different regions, especially vulnerable communities with limited infrastructure.”