Susan McNeil
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
Prince Albert Daily Herald
Tests on Prince Albert’s wastewater show a sharp increase in viral load of COVID-19 that could predict an increase in cases in the city.
In the first reporting period that started on August 16 and ended on Aug. 23, they found a 413 per cent increase in viral RNA load in local wastewater. At the beginning numbers were low but that has now changed.
“For about three weeks it was quite well, but it was low everywhere at that point,” said Kerry McPhedran, assistant professor with the College of Engineering, Environmental Engineering at the University of Saskatchewan.
McPhedran and several other researchers from multiple departments have been studying Saskatoon’s wastewater since last year. They added Prince Albert and North Battleford to the list in June 2021.
August 31 marked the first reporting periods for the two added cities.
“It was the end of July when we saw the numbers going up and this is where we’re seeing them go up again,” McPhedran said.
The province lifted all public health orders as of July 11 and so the growth was not that much of a surprise to the research team.
“We don’t do too much prediction, but there have been three waves and we’ve seen in the media that the fourth wave was coming. We do connect with wastewater monitoring across Canada and the same in Ontario and Quebec, the numbers were low and are going up again,” said McPhedran.
When people are first infected with the COVID virus, they don’t have symptoms but they contribute to the wastewater.
Researchers collect samples and monitor to see if the actual case numbers follow what they see in the wastewater.
“Worldwide, that’s what we’ve been seeing. It takes three or four days for you to start showing symptoms and that’s when you would go get tested,” McPhedran explained. “That is a good way to model. It’s working everywhere else and so theoretically it should work in Prince Albert as well.”
While the funding they received is federal, the information is being shared with provincial health officials to allow them to predict increase and plan resource allocation accordingly.
In order to get the sample, kits are sent to the participating municipalities who have a staff member take the sample twice per week and return it to the University.
“In the future we want to set this up so if another pandemic does happen again, we’ll be more ready to respond to it,” McPhedran said.
“As far as for the current pandemic, there’s not much use except to see if the numbers are going up or down but this gives Public Health the means to respond faster,” he said.
Data gathered earlier in the pandemic allowed the province to allocate vaccine rollout to target hotspots.
The current funding goes until the end of March 2022. All data has been shared with Saskatchewan health authorities.
