Tracking coronavirus in sewage — letters of Energy & Commerce Committee Republicans to CDC and EPA
On August 12, Republican leaders of the House of Representatives Committee on Energy & Commerce and three of its Subcommittees asked the heads of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) about “Wastewater as a Surveillance Tool for COVID-19.”
Their letter to EPA included [footnotes omitted]:
We write to request information about the actions that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has taken to help the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) improve surveillance of COVID-19 in the United States. Surveillance, in combination with a robust testing strategy, is paramount to knowing where and how many COVID-19 infections are in a given geographic location in the U.S., especially given the estimated rate of individuals infected withCOVID-19 who are asymptomatic.
In addition, surveillance helps to collect data and learn more about SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, which in turn helps public health officials and policy makers with critical decision making.
A robust surveillance system could provide invaluable feedback to decision makers at all levels of government, especially state and local levels of government, with respect to what level of mitigation strategies need to be implemented at any given point.
In addition to various jurisdictions and academic institutions conducting research, researchers at the EPA and CDC “are developing and applying methods for measuring SARS- CoV-2 levels in wastewater.” Two ongoing research projects at the EPA include 1) Standardize Methods to Assess Virus in Sewage; and 2) Monitor Virus Levels in Sewage to Assess Community Infection Rate.
In addition to utilizing wastewater surveillance for COVID-19 surveillance, such a tool could also help researchers and scientists learn more about the virus, which would in turn help inform and improve the U.S.’ overall response to COVID-19. For example, when combined with other tools, wastewater surveillance could help CDC with its COVID-19 surveillance goals to monitor the spread and intensity of disease in the U.S., understand disease severity and the spectrum of illness, understand risk factors for severe disease and transmission, monitor for changes in the virus that causes COVID-19, estimate disease burden, and produce data for forecasting COVID-19 spread and impact.
The Committee is interested in learning more about if, and how, EPA is examining, developing, and utilizing wastewater as a surveillance tool for COVID-19 to improve the U.S.’ COVID-19 surveillance efforts, including EPA’s efforts to work with other agencies, private companies, academia, or other researchers already doing similar work on wastewater surveillance. To assist the Committee in its efforts, please make arrangements to provide a briefing to Committee staff by August 26, 2020.
On July 16 Senator Dianne Feinstein wrote to the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (in which CDC is located) and the Administrator of EPA urging priority be given for “funding to implement nationwide wastewater surveillance efforts related to COVID19”: