The wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) team is currently focused on COVID-19 with the goal of identifying emerging viral hotspots up to a week earlier than traditional tests, giving public health workers valuable time to mobilize. WBE will also be important for other current and future public health concerns.
Wastewater-based epidemiology should warn of emerging viral hotspots up to a week earlier than traditional tests, and give public health workers valuable time to mobilize. The program, however, will be important for additional and future public health concerns.
Wastewater-based epidemiology — the testing of raw sewage for pathogens such as the SARS-CoV-2 virus — provides a non-invasive, cost-effective way to measure community health, including in areas where clinical testing may be underutilized or unavailable. It is a leap forward in extending health equity to people without access to medical care.
Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, the Discovery Partners Institute, University of Illinois Chicago, Northwestern University and Argonne National Laboratory formed a science team to track the coronavirus in wastewater. Working from scratch in 2020, the team chose collection sites, based on social vulnerability, and a workflow for collecting and analyzing samples from treatment plants and sewers in neighborhoods, airports and jails. Implementation involved a unique public-private partnership, including City of Chicago, Cook County, the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District, nonprofit organization Current Water and private contractors, which evolved into a surveillance system adopted by the Chicago Department of Public Health in 2021.
The Illinois Department of Public Health engaged the team, also in 2021, to build the Illinois Wastewater Surveillance System. The collection and transport of statewide samples required a new approach to logistics. A network of wastewater treatment plant operators volunteered to offer samples and a high-throughput lab was developed at UIC to process 150 samples a week, leading to designation as a national Wastewater Center of Excellence. Argonne developed methods to sequence wastewater samples, providing data on COVID-19 variants at a scope, speed and quality not previously seen and yielding Illinois’s first detections of the BA.2 and BA.4 variants. Northwestern headed efforts to enhance and customize data analytics for Illinois public health needs while DPI managed program logistics.
By early 2024, we were collecting samples from over 104 locations, providing reliable, crucial public health information for 9 million Illinoisans at a cost of less than $1 per person each year. To date, over 20,000 samples have been analyzed and close to 13,000 samples have been sequenced. Total funding, largely from the city and state public health departments, comes to more than $27 million and extends the surveillance through mid-2025.
microbe@uic.edu
University of Illinois at Chicago: Associate Professor, Biological Sciences
sarah.owens@anl.gov
Argonne National Laboratory: Sequencing Laboratory Manager, Biosciences Division
a-packman@northwestern.edu
Northwestern University: Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering
katelyn.leisman@northwestern.edu
Northwestern University: Research Assistant Professor, Engineering Sciences and Applied Mathematics
George Bian
george23@u.northwestern.edu
Northwestern University: Research Assistant
Michelle Campos
mcampo30@illinois.edu
University of Illinois Chicago: Undergraduate Researcher
Guyi Chen
guyichen2024@u.northwestern.edu
Northwestern University: Graduate Research Assistant
Shuotao (Sonny) Diao
shuotao.diao@northwestern.edu
Northwestern University: Postdoctoral Researcher
Haya Al-Duroobi
haya@uic.edu
University of Illinois Chicago: Postdoctoral Researcher
Adam Horton
adam47@uillinois.edu
Discovery Partners Institute and UIC Department of Biological Sciences: Lab Manager
Modou Jarju
mljarju@uillinois.edu
Discovery Partners Institute and UIC Department of Biological Sciences: Lab Technician
kjogi2@uillinois.edu
Discovery Partners Institute: Research Software Development Engineer
clin213@uillinois.edu
Discovery Partners Institute: Department of Biological Sciences, Laboratory Scientist
Carol Liu
carolliu2024@u.northwestern.edu
Northwestern University: Undergraduate Researcher
niall.mangan@northwestern.edu
Northwestern University: Assistant Professor, Engineering Sciences and Applied Mathematics
david.morton@northwestern.edu
Northwestern University: Professor, Industrial Engineering and Management Sciences
Kim Nguyen
kimnguyen2023@u.northwestern.edu
Northwestern University: Undergraduate Researcher
dsanch52@uillinois.edu
Discovery Partners Institute: Department of Biological Sciences, Lab Manager
Michael Secreto
msecre3@uillinois.edu
Discovery Partners Institute and UIC Department of Biological Sciences: Lab Technician
Maria Warns
mariawarns2025@u.northwestern.edu
Northwestern University: Graduate Research Assistant
Founding Partners
Members
Prisila Alvarez
Haidy Delgado
Sam Dorevitch
Eva Durance
Shuchen Feng
Melissa Pierce
Christina Negri
Alexandra Soltys
Eugene Yan
The Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) and the Discovery Partners Institute (DPI) today announced a statewide system to monitor the virus that causes COVID-19 and its variants in wastewater, providing public health officials with early warnings of a potential outbreak on a county-by-county basis.
“You know, I wanted to get as far out front of determining what the positivity rate was in the jail,” Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart told NBC5. “It’s just a proactive thing that I really wanted to do.”
The process is complex, but the premise is rather simple. After all, anyone infected with the virus sheds evidence of it in their waste…
Wastewater provides a clue to virus transmission.
In the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, finding ways to improve testing has been key to addressing the spread of disease. While much effort has focused on testing individual people, scientists have begun to explore large-scale sampling of wastewater to understand patterns of viral transmission over larger areas.
Researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory are participating in a pilot study to sample wastewater at some of the Chicago area’s wastewater treatment plants…
The Walder Foundation has awarded a Discovery Partners Institute (DPI) science team led by the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) $1.25 million to develop a prototype capability for detecting COVID-19 outbreaks and trends in Chicago’s wastewater.
The goal of the Chicago Prototype Coronavirus Assessment Network Node, or PCANN, is to create a non-invasive, cost-effective way to examine community spread of the virus, by monitoring its initial appearance or changes over time in the city’s wastewater systems…