‘I was shocked’: Ontario to cancel widely praised wastewater surveillance program

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The Ontario government is shutting down the wastewater surveillance program that has provided early warning for incoming waves of COVID-19 and a growing list of other infectious diseases since it was developed.

By the time it ends on July 31, the program that got its start in Ottawa early in the pandemic will be one of the biggest in the world to monitor the spread of infectious diseases through wastewater. Researchers were told of the decision to end funding last week.

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Its closure comes at a time when COVID-19 is again beginning to spread through the world after a lull and when the United States and other countries are ramping up wastewater surveillance programs to closely monitor the spread of H5N1 avian influenza.

The province says it is shutting down the initiative in order to avoid duplication with what it says is an expanding federal wastewater surveillance program. Federal testing in Ontario is currently significantly more limited than the program the province is shutting down. Gary Wheeler, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Parks, said the federal government “is moving to expand its sampling to additional sites in Ontario.” No further details were immediately available.

Wheeler said Ontario was “working to support this expansion” while winding down its wastewater surveillance initiative. He said the Ministry of Health would work with the Public Health Agency of Canada on a data-sharing agreement “to ensure that the province can continue to analyze Ontario specific wastewater data.”

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The decision to stop funding has come as a shock to researchers who developed the program, to public health officials and to many who rely on the data. Just last fall the Ontario Public Health Emergency Scientific Advisory Committee, which was set up by the province to advise the chief medical officer of health, urged the province to continue, or even expand, wastewater surveillance, saying it has played a critical role in Ontario “as an early warning signal of emergence of a pathogen or pathogen-related variants of concern.”

Peterborough’s medical officer of health, Dr. Thomas Piggott, posted on X that he was “deeply disappointed” to learn funding for the wastewater surveillance program had been cancelled.

“This has been critical information not only for COVID-19, but other infectious disease threats (influenza, RSV, MPox, polio and now H5N1) in Ontario,” Piggott posted.

Rob Delatolla, the University of Ottawa engineering professor whose lab became the first in Canada to pick up data on SARS-CoV -2 — the virus that causes COVID-19 — in wastewater in April 2020, said he was stunned to learn of the decision that the program’s funding would end. It came without warning, he said.

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“We all got phone calls and then letters. I was shocked.”

Delatolla said researchers were not given any explanation for the decision.

“Four years ago, nobody knew what to do with this wastewater data. We built this knowledge. When the next one hits us, that knowledge is going to be important and I am just worried that we will lose it.”

Delatolla said he didn’t know “in what capacity we can continue to do what we have been doing or if we can continue to do what we have been doing.”

Since Delatolla’s lab and Ottawa Public Health began using wastewater surveillance to understand the spread of COVID-19 in the community, the program has grown to include all of Ontario and numerous other illnesses, including influenza, RSV and monkeypox.

The use of wastewater testing to accurately predict when the seasonal virus RSV starts spreading in the province has had tangible consequences, a study found. Ontario administers prophylactic medicine to children at the highest risk of poor outcomes from RSV, but timing is important.

Using wastewater surveillance to better pinpoint the start of seasonal RSV prevented 295 children from being hospitalized and 950 medically attended hospital visits, saving the province $3.5 million, according to research. The cost per child for the surveillance program was 50 cents per child, per season, Delatolla said.

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“In addition to COVID-19, his lab tests wastewater for influenza A and B, RSV, Mpox, polio, measles and avian influenza H5N1.

He said he was still figuring out what it meant for his work and his lab. But Delatolla said he had deep fears about the loss of the knowledge gained over the past several years, especially at a time when the world is on alert over a potential spillover of avian influenza to humans.

“We are losing the ability to monitor respiratory disease, but we are also losing a lot of knowledge. The program is being closed completely, not partially. Are we going to be able to keep that knowledge in Ontario for the next round?”

He also noted that the decision came at a time when “there is — even though it is small — some risk of this highly pathogenic avian influenza (H5N1) and other pathogenics coming into our space.”

On the social media platform X, uOttawa epidemiologist Raywat Deonandan called the move “a sad day for public health. Our last surveillance tool meant for the general public bites the dust.”

In a statement, Ottawa Public Health confirmed that the wastewater surveillance program would end on July 31 and said the health unit was still assessing the decision’s impact on its operations.

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