State wastewater examined
Huge increase in virus that causes COVID seen
Researchers see huge increase in the virus that causes COVID-19.
Sewage surveillance in Oklahoma’s metropolitan areas has detected huge increases in levels of the virus that causes COVID-19, researchers said this week.
Over the past two weeks, concentrations of the virus in samples from wastewater treatment plants across the state have been between 33 and 67 times higher than when they were measured in May, University of Oklahoma and OU Health researchers found.
In mid-May, Oklahoma was averaging about 171 new cases reported per day. On Wednesday, the seven-day average of new cases was nearly 2,800 — a more than 1,500% increase. The surge, fueled by the more transmissible delta variant, has hit the unvaccinated hard and overwhelmed hospitals.
Through the tracking of wastewater, public health officials have a window into where and how much COVID-19 is spreading in the community. It can predict surges about a week before case counts increase, because it doesn’t rely on individual people developing symptoms and seeking out tests.
Many people with COVID-19 shed the virus in their waste before they develop symptoms, and the concentrations of virus in wastewater are directly related to the number of people with COVID-19 in the area.
The increasing levels of the virus that causes COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2, in wastewater “are yet another indicator that new infections are occurring rapidly throughout the state,” Halley Reeves, OU Health vice president of community and rural health impact, said in a statement.
“We haven’t seen concentration levels like these since just before our winter case surge,” Reeves said.
The wastewater surveillance may also indicate that there are more people with COVID-19 in the community than our state’s case numbers reflect, Dr. Dale Bratzler said Wednesday.
“I think we miss a bunch of cases in the community,” said Bratzler, the University of Oklahoma’s chief COVID-19 officer. “We’re not doing enough testing. People who are direct contacts or exposed are not getting tested. Testing is a bit hard to find right now. So I think we miss a lot of cases.”
As of Wednesday, the state Health Department reported over 22,000 active COVID-19 infections in Oklahomans across the state. That’s an undercount, since people who are asymptomatic or who have mild symptoms may not seek out a test, Bratzler said.
“You can be spreading the virus and feel perfectly fine,” he said. “So again, in public settings, particularly indoors, assume anybody you encounter could be infected and wear a mask to protect yourself.”
The samples don’t show signs of a
“decrease in transmission during the near future,” so it’s important for people to keep taking precautions like wearing masks and getting vaccinated, said Phil Maytubby, the chief operating officer of the Oklahoma City-County Health Department.
The health department has used wastewater data to inform some of its pandemic response efforts. Higher concentration of the virus in in sewage was part of what led the department to host a pop-up vaccination event at Feria Latina Supermarket in May.