Locating the Next COVID Variant Outbreak

"[Delta is] the next scariest variant that is worrying people [all the more so that most people in Ontario received only a single dose of inoculation against the SARS-CoV-2 virus]."

"There is a lot of pressure [to complete the test], but, at the end of the day, we want to make sure it works. We have to balance the time pressure with the quality and reliability of the test."

"Scientists, we have very few eureka moments and I guess that's one of them [testing community wastewater for the presence of COVID]."

"A million-dollar question right now in the field is trying to correlate the case numbers in the city or any surveyed area with the wastewater signal, and we still don't really have a good idea of how to do that."

"I think at this point in time, [it] is not a question of if it's going to happen. It's a question of when and so the earlier we can get this information into the hands of public health officials, the better."  

Tyson Graber, research cell biologist, Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario

Scientists at the CHEO Research Institute in Ottawa say this is the first test in Canada that can detect the variant first reported in the U.K., using wastewater. (Francis Ferland/CBC)

The World Health Organization, in a bid to move identification of viruses away from the geographic location in which they originally surfaced has now resorted to renaming the U.K., India, Brazil, South Africa variants with the letters of the Greek alphabet to make them neutral in character. Dr.Graber and other researchers are working frantically in the creation of tests to track the latest variants of concern, to be found in municipal wastewater in an expanding move to more fully understand how the viruses causing COVID-19 mutates.

Funding has just been made available to the project out of CHEO and the University of Guelph, to financially support the research on testing potentials. The funding has come out of Genome Canada, Ontario Genomics and Illumina for researchers working out of the University of Ottawa, Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario, and the University of Guelph, collaborating on the project. It is vital to develop new and expanded testing for the purpose of measuring variants, and all the more critical that it be done as expeditiously as possible at a time when the variant that surfaced first in India, now known as Delta spreads in Ontario and elsewhere in the world.

It has proven to be more contagious than the U.K. variant (now identified as Alpha) which was responsible for the virulence of the third wave that pushed through Ontario, taking hospitals to the brink of operational collapse. The urgency to identify the presence of these viruses in wastewater increases in the face of the reality that the Delta variant is known to be more resistant to vaccines. One dose of vaccine offers merely 33 percent protection against this version of COVID-19 in comparison to the 50 percent protection against the Alpha variant.

 

Scientists are still working to develop a test that will detect variants first found in Brazil and South Africa using wastewater. (Francis Ferland/CBC)

 

An incomplete schematic of rates of variants is currently the reality reflecting the fact that only a small percentage of clinical samples in Ontario are sequenced in the bid to identify variants of concern. Wastewater surveillance increases knowledge of which variants are circulating and spreading. Delta has been found to be the dominant strain in the United Kingdom, at the present time. While in Ontario a small number of cases have surfaced.

 

Peel, the hardest hit region in southern Ontario, can expect the Delta variant to dominate within a month, according to its chief medical officer, Dr.Lawrence Loh. Who made his projection reliant on wastewater data leading him to the conclusion that in his region variant spread is a looming threat. Labs in Ontario will now be processing metagenetic wastewater testing, long done at the National Microbiology Lab in Winnipeg. 

 

The end function of wastewater monitoring is to identify potential outbreaks before they are diagnosed in people through clinical testing. This is the kind of testing that can give medical authorities a heads-up a week in advance of clinical tests verifying the presence of the COVID-19 virus or its variants. That heads-up can prepare the medical community to react before people develop symptoms, measuring as well infections in people without symptoms.

The additional research funding is meant to expand metagenetic testing to research centres across the province from the genetic sequencing currently done that can produce a picture of what to expect in regions of the province. Dr.Graber, who had previously developed a test to identify wastewater Alpha variant, is now focusing his team on like tests for Delta and the Brazil-surfaced variant now identified as Gamma.

Novel Coronavirus Endangering Marine Life

"Many of these species are threatened or critically endangered."

"In the past, these animals have been infected by related coronaviruses that have caused both mild disease as well as life-threatening liver and lung damage."

Graham Dellaire, director of research, pathology department, Dalhousie University, Halifax

“Our major concern is in developing nations, where there is already a disparity in public health and the wastewater treatment infrastructure required to handle the COVID-19 crisis."

"Monitoring susceptible species in these high-risk areas around the world will be pertinent for protecting wildlife during and post-pandemic."

Saby Mathavarajah, Killam pre-doctoral fellow, Dr. Dellaire’s lab

 

"Over the past several months our lab has been focused on detection of SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater to help understand public health outcomes."

"However, this study helped to shine a light on a potentially significant environmental concern of untreated wastewater."

Graham Gagnon, professor, Department of Civil and Resource Engineering, Dalhousie University

Belugas are extremely sociable mammals that live, hunt and migrate together in pods, ranging from a few individuals to hundreds of whales. Their bulbous forehead, called a "melon”, is flexible and capable of changing shape. This allows them to make different facial expressions. Belugas can produce a series of chirps, clicks, whistles and squeals, which give the beluga its other name, "the canary of the sea." They may sound like music or even nonsense to us, but to fellow belugas they convey important information. World Wildlife Fund

 

Researchers out of Dalhousie University, with data on dolphins and beluga whales infected with coronaviruses in the past, have raised the alarm over COVID-19 spreading to whales and other marine mammals through improperly treated sewage and wastewater. Their study was published in the journal Science of the Total Environment, where the Dalhousie University scientists describe making use of genomic mapping in order to determine which marine mammals would be vulnerable to the novel coronavirus.  

 

The research team studied amino acids which the virus binds to, discovering striking similarities between those in humans and in several marine mammals, a group including dolphins, beluga whales, seals and sea otters. At least 15 marine mammal species were found to be susceptible to infections, reflecting the fact that they each carry a protein required for the virus to be enabled to infect cells, according to Graham Dellaire, director of research in the pathology department of Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. 

 

A researcher was surveying seabirds off the coast of Vancouver Island when he spotted something unexpected: a huge group of common bottlenose dolphins — about 200 of them — breaching and swimming.   Mike Hill/Getty Images

The prediction coming out of the study is that the majority of whale, dolphin and porpoise species -- some 18 of 21 -- have identical or higher susceptibility to the virus as do humans. Eight out of nine seal species are also predicted to be highly susceptible to infection by the coronavirus. The virus is excreted in feces and can survive in water for up to 25 days, according to studies.

This raises the possibility that wastewater has the potential to spread the disease. It has already occurred in Spain, Italy and France, where the virus has been detected in untreated sewage.

Whales, like the beluga, are at the top of the food chain and have an important role in the overall health of the marine environment. Beluga whales are also culturally important to indigenous communities in the Arctic. Like polar bears, the beluga depends on sea ice for its existence and can be directly impacted by climate change.  WWF