NEW YORK – After Manhattan Borough President Gale A. Brewer called for the city to employ the testing of sewage at wastewater treatment facilities for the presence and viral load of SARS-CoV-2 in May, the city's Department of Environmental Protection responded to the borough president, writing "The DEP Bureau of Wastewater Treatment (BWT) is working to implement molecular monitoring techniques in sewage to help inform the City’s COVID-19 response, and to prepare the City for future challenges of a similar nature."
The DEP is collecting samples from all 14 Wastewater Resource Recovery Facilities and sending them to Stanford University for analysis. They have also set up a team at the Newtown Creek Microbiological Laboratory to move to conduct this time-sensitive analysis in-house, eliminating delays and uncertainty caused by shipping samples.
"Thanks to the Department of Environmental Protection, the city will be able to add the testing of sewage for the presence of SARS-CoV-2 in its public health arsenal's ability to non-invasively detect the presence of the virus," said Manhattan Borough President Gale A. Brewer. "I commend Commissioner Vincent Sapienza, and Deputy Commissioner Pamela Elardo for launching this early warning system which could potentially determine the extent of community spread of SARS-CoV-2. I also congratulate the Manhattan Solid Waste Advisory Board (SWAB) for analyzing this practice and putting forth these recommendations."
"We thank the Borough President for her continued support of Waste Water Testing as an additional technique that will aid in the effort to keep all New York City residents safe as we open up the city. We also appreciate the DEP's commitment of expertise to testing that will have a great impact on our City's response to this crisis," said Matthew Civello, chair of the Manhattan Solid Waste Advisory Board (SWAB).
"I thank the DEP for understanding the importance of wastewater testing to detect coronavirus. Coronavirus RNA in wastewater provides a one-week warning before we see cases in the health system, said Professor David Larsen, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Public Health and an expert in infectious disease epidemiology at Syracuse University. "But we need to make the testing more efficient, as shipping samples across the country will cut into that week’s warning. A team of SUNY and Syracuse University scientists is trying to scale the early warning platform across the state. Let’s scale that platform in NYC as well."
“New York City is ahead of the curve in including sewer surveillance in its arsenal of tools to monitor for the presence and transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in its communities. Sewer surveillance has great promise to supplement contact tracing and other individualized approaches by providing rapid and frequent snapshots of the virus’s prevalence at the community and municipality scale,” said Professor Kevin Bisceglia, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Chemistry at Hofstra University.
Source: The Office of the Manhattan Borough President
The DEP is collecting samples from all 14 Wastewater Resource Recovery Facilities and sending them to Stanford University for analysis. They have also set up a team at the Newtown Creek Microbiological Laboratory to move to conduct this time-sensitive analysis in-house, eliminating delays and uncertainty caused by shipping samples.
"Thanks to the Department of Environmental Protection, the city will be able to add the testing of sewage for the presence of SARS-CoV-2 in its public health arsenal's ability to non-invasively detect the presence of the virus," said Manhattan Borough President Gale A. Brewer. "I commend Commissioner Vincent Sapienza, and Deputy Commissioner Pamela Elardo for launching this early warning system which could potentially determine the extent of community spread of SARS-CoV-2. I also congratulate the Manhattan Solid Waste Advisory Board (SWAB) for analyzing this practice and putting forth these recommendations."
"We thank the Borough President for her continued support of Waste Water Testing as an additional technique that will aid in the effort to keep all New York City residents safe as we open up the city. We also appreciate the DEP's commitment of expertise to testing that will have a great impact on our City's response to this crisis," said Matthew Civello, chair of the Manhattan Solid Waste Advisory Board (SWAB).
"I thank the DEP for understanding the importance of wastewater testing to detect coronavirus. Coronavirus RNA in wastewater provides a one-week warning before we see cases in the health system, said Professor David Larsen, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Public Health and an expert in infectious disease epidemiology at Syracuse University. "But we need to make the testing more efficient, as shipping samples across the country will cut into that week’s warning. A team of SUNY and Syracuse University scientists is trying to scale the early warning platform across the state. Let’s scale that platform in NYC as well."
“New York City is ahead of the curve in including sewer surveillance in its arsenal of tools to monitor for the presence and transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in its communities. Sewer surveillance has great promise to supplement contact tracing and other individualized approaches by providing rapid and frequent snapshots of the virus’s prevalence at the community and municipality scale,” said Professor Kevin Bisceglia, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Chemistry at Hofstra University.
Source: The Office of the Manhattan Borough President
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