Parallel Workshops
Measuring the level of SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater, or wastewater testing, can assist in predicting increases or decreases in COVID-19 cases in a community. This presentation will demonstrate the feasibility of wastewater testing in Canada’s federal correctional facilities and the correlation of wastewater results with cases of COVID-19 among staff and offenders within those institutions. Moving forward, CSC plans to onboard more sites and decentralize wastewater analysis to enable more timely information for risk management decision making and outbreak containment and prevention. Additional data will assist CSC in developing and validating a prediction model to identify case clusters not yet apparent based on clinical illness. Beyond COVID-19, the national wastewater surveillance project also demonstrates potential to surveil and predict other infectious disease outbreaks.