OREGON STATE UNIVERSITY
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OSU Clean Water Showcase May 22, 2024. You are invited to attend OSU’s 2024 Clean Water Showcase taking place at LaSell Stewart Center on the OSU Corvallis campus from 9 am to 5 pm on May 22nd. The event is free but please RSVP at Showcase RSVP Link . Mark Bransom will be giving the Dean’s Distinguished Lecture the evening before, May 21st at 6 pm. The RSVP link for the Distinguished lecture is Distinguished Lecture RSVP Link. Options for both are in-person and virtual.
“Dive into the future of clean water solutions …. Join us for inspiring keynotes on clean water technology for developing nations, the state of desalination, and securing Oregon’s water future. Explore cutting-edge research through lightning talks, presentations, panel discussions, and more, and engage in networking opportunities to learn about and help shape transformational approaches to clean water.”
For more information including a list of speakers, visit https://engineering.oregonstate.edu/research/water/showcase#clean-water-showcase.
Flu/RSV Email Results Plot Redesign. We recently redesigned the flu and RSV plots that are embedded in each community’s weekly email results. The goal was to highlight the detected data points (in blue for combined flu A/flu B and green for RSV) and clearly indicate the non-detects (light grey) as a different metric. The sample dates are now easier to read and show seasonality, and gridlines were added to more easily read the viral concentration values. These plots more closely match the OHA Dashboard design. We hope that these changes make it easier to see trends in the data. The COVID email results plots are up next
for a redesign this spring.
Local Public Health Wastewater Surveillance Use Testimonials on WEF Network of Wastewater-Based Epidemiology (NWBE) Website.
“There are dozens of wastewater surveillance programs across the United States, designed to address gaps in traditional public health surveillance efforts. While state health departments often manage these programs, the translation of wastewater data into direct public health actions typically occurs at the local health department or institutional level. The examples below showcase the diverse applications of wastewater data by health departments”
See the examples here: https://nwbe.org/?page_id=3861.
If you would like to share how your health department is using wastewater data with the NWBE site, you can fill out their form at https://nwbe.org/?page_id=3861#form.
One-day wastewater surveillance workshop run by WEF and the California CoE on June 5, 2024. Standford University in Redwood City, California. Some travel funds available.
WEF and California CoE Wastewater Surveillance workshop June 5, 2024. Oregon Utilities have been invited to attend a free one-day wastewater surveillance workshop run by WEF and the California CoE on June 5, 2024. The workshop is at Standford University in Redwood City, California. Some travel funds are available from WEF. If interested, see the attached flyer to register.
california_coe_wastewater_workshop_flyer.pdf (433.54 KB)
Dashboards. Recall, wastewater concentrations can be shown alongside clinical testing percent positivity in Oregon on the OHA Wastewater Surveillance Dashboard. If you select SARS-CoV-2, then select a city, a plot of viral concentration with time is shown. Selecting one of the points will indicate the variants found in that sample. Wastewater concentrations and variants in Oregon can be compared to regional and national trends on the NWSS Dashboard.
Testing the effect of filter pore size. Late in the fall several utilities (Astoria, Boardman, Canby, Grants Pass, Hood River, Lincoln City, Port Orford, Roseburg, Salem) helped test the possibility of using 0.6 um pore size electronegative filters instead of 0.45 um pore size. Thank you for your assistance! While the 0.6 um filters did result in much faster filtering times, the pathogen concentration results had a higher variability than the 0.45 um filters. Therefore, we decided not to change the filtering procedure. We welcome suggestions that may make utility collection efforts easier or more efficient.
Sampling supply schedule. Since August, we have been following an 8-week supply schedule, where we send utilities 10 weeks of supplies every 8 weeks. We did this to ensure no one ran out of supplies, which had been common prior to August. This change, in conjunction with our reduction from 2 to 1 samples per week in September, has resulted in some utilities having a large inventory of sampling supplies (see photos from Ontario and Dallas!). We will be asking utilities by email in the next 8 weeks if you need supplies or would like to pause this cycle.
OHA Communicable Disease Summary. Last January (2023), OHA published a summary describing wastewater-based surveillance (WBS) in Oregon, focusing on Bend. From the article “… Given the limitations of case-based surveillance, epidemiologists are increasingly turning to community-level surveillance methods such as WBS. WBS for COVID-19 offers several advantages over traditional surveillance methods. WBS allows the rapid detection of community disease spread, captures mild and sub-clinical infections that would be missed by clinical surveillance efforts and functions independently of healthcare-seeking behavior and testing access.” See the full summary for more information.
What is RNA? The viruses we routinely test for in wastewater samples are RNA viruses. We search for these viruses based on specific regions, or sequences, in their RNA. RNA (ribonucleic acid) is structurally similar to DNA (deoxynucleic acid) except that it is usually single stranded rather than double stranded, contains an uracil base rather than a thymine base, and contains an extra oxygen molecule to make a ribose sugar. Viral RNA is replicated and used to produce viral proteins using the host cell’s machinery.
Genomic Surveillance. From the CDC (https://archive.cdc.gov/#/details?url=https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/variants/genomic-surveillance.html) “All viruses change (or mutate) as they replicate and spread in a population. Viruses that have RNA as genetic material, such as SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) and influenza, mutate much faster than viruses with DNA. Every time SARS-CoV-2 replicates, there is an opportunity for the virus to change. Many mutations do not affect the virus’s ability to spread or cause disease because they do not alter the major proteins involved in infection and transmission.
When one of these changes does affect the virus’s ability to spread or cause disease, there may be a competitive advantage over the other lineages of SARS-CoV-2. Over time, certain lineages with these advantages become more prevalent and circulate in a population. When a lineage or group of lineages have characteristics that impact public health, CDC may classify them as a “variant of interest”, or “variant of concern”.”
OSU sequences all wastewater samples that have positive COVID-19 measurements above 4.0 log copies per liter of wastewater, and reports the variants found to OHA and NWSS-CDC where the information is included on the public dashboards.
The JN.1 Sars-CoV-2 variant has been detected in Oregon wastewater samples since October of 2023. Starting this month, the JN.1 variant will be listed in its own column in the email results attachment. According to the CDC:
“JN.1 is closely related to the variant BA.2.86 …. Even though BA.2.86 and JN.1 sound very different because of the way variants are named, there is only a single change between JN.1 and BA.2.86 in the spike protein. JN.1 was first detected in the United States in September 2023….CDC projects that JN.1 will continue to increase as a proportion of SARS-CoV-2 genomic sequences. It is currently the fastest-growing variant in the United States. The continued growth of JN.1 suggests that it is either more transmissible or better at evading our immune systems. At this time, there is no evidence that JN.1 presents an increased risk to public health relative to other currently circulating variants.”
See the image below for frequently detected Sars-CoV-2 lineages, including JN.1:
