Wastewater Testing a Pivotal Tool for Monitoring H5N1 Outbreak

Wastewater testing has the potential to become even more important as H5N1 avian flu continues to spread, according to Marc Johnson, PhD, of the University of Missouri. CIDRAP has the article.

According to Johnson, a probe he developed to “detect H5 avian influenza A virus (IAV) genetic material in city wastewater” could have detected the virus back in February, perhaps leading to a quicker response. Treatment plant operators “collect composite samples from the water every 15 or 30 minutes and send them to a lab.”

As Healthcare Purchasing News has previously reported on, the H5N1 outbreak has been steadily growing in the U.S. since late March, when the virus was discovered in cows. In April, researchers at Emory University “used a hydrolysis probe-based reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) to measure H5 concentrations in wastewater dating back to February 4 at three sentinel Texas treatment plants near the H5N1 2.3.4.4b outbreak epicenter.” The virus was not detectable until mid-March, but numbers went up substantially then, coinciding with “flu-related emergency department visits in the associated Texas public health regions” declined, which suggests wastewater monitoring as a viable method of “monitoring certain animal pathogens.”

Surveillance of wastewater can also provide researchers with data on “whether the virus is changing” or mutating.