Deep Dive: Dr. Steve Hrudey, COVID-19 Wastewater Coalition, Canadian Water Network

In this episode we talk to Dr. Steve Hrudey the Chair of the COVID-19 Wastewater Coalition from the Canadian Water Network. Dr. Hrudey helps us understand how Wastewater Surveillance for COVID-19 works and how you can test samples from our sewers to understand where the virus has spread.

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted everyone across this planet, has tested our ability to adapt, develop and role out vaccines and figure out efficient ways to test and monitor our entire population.

When testing is limited, what is the best way to understand the spread of a virus in a large population? You don't have to be a math whiz to know that being able to test an entire population with one sample versus testing everyone individually means a lot less work. This technology is becoming even more important as we begin tracking new variants within our communities and begin planning to protect ourselves for any potential future pandemics.

To find out more about the wastewater surveillance for COVID-19 in Canada and the  Canadian Water Network COVID-19 Wastewater Coalition Click Here.

To find out more about the Aquatic Biosphere Project Click Here.

The Aquatic Bisophere Project
The ABP is establishing a conservation Aquarium in the Prairies to help tell the Story of Water.

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Transcript

David Evans: 0:25

Welcome to today's deep dive episode, you'll be hearing from Dr. Steve Hrudey, the chair of the Canadian water networks COVID-19 wastewater coalition. I will preface this episode with that this was recorded on December 14 2020. And as everyone knows, with COVID, everything seemed to change every single week. There was no variants of concern at the time. And now it seems that variants are all we're talking about almost on the news. Between our interview and when this episode aired, I was able to reach out to Dr. Hrudey, and he did actually let me know that we are starting to test for variance using this method. So there's lots of promise for it yet in the future. And I'm so excited that you're here listening to this episode with us today. Please sit back, relax, and get ready for a deep dive episode on wastewater surveillance for COVID-19. Water we doing? And how can we do better? your one stop shop for everything water related from discussing water to use and the organisms that depend on it. For all the global issues you really never knew all had to do with water. I'm your host, David Evans from the aquatic biosphere project. And I just want to ask you something. What are we doing? How can we do better? So unless you've been living underneath the rock, I'm pretty sure you'll have heard of this covid 19 pandemic that we're all in. Now I've been doing a lot of research into what we're doing because I've had to shove one of these tests up my nose and it's not pleasant. So what are we doing that we can test more people at once? There's got to be a simpler way. Today we're talking to Dr. Steve Hrudey, and I'm so excited to have you in for an interview. I'm so excited to pick your brain about wastewater surveillance and how we can and how we can test so many more people at once. So Dr. Steve Hrudey, can you just introduce yourself and tell us a little bit about what you do?

Dr. Steve Hrudey, Canadian Water Network: 3:13

Okay, well, my name is Steve Hrudey. I'm a retired professor from the Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry at the University of Alberta. I have about 50 years of practice and experience in both applications and research in Environmental Health Sciences. for about the past 25 years, I've focused on safe drinking water was involved in the walkerton inquiry for people who were around 20 years ago, which was one of our last public health disasters, but not anything like what we're going through now.

David Evans: 3:47

Awesome. I'm originally from Ontario, so I'm familiar with the walkerton story. If you don't know much about it, then definitely go and take a look at that. It's a cautionary tale for sure. So could you just start off I guess, with explaining a bit about wastewater based epidemiology and what it means.

Dr. Steve Hrudey, Canadian Water Network: 4:04

Okay, well, this is a term that's largely been adopted for this activity. Probably a more accurate term would be to say wastewater based surveillance. epidemiologists will debate as to whether Surveillance and Epidemiology are interchangeable, but epidemiology really means connecting cause and effect, whereas surveillance is the data gathering part that contributes to to epidemiology. So with water based epidemiology is has a long track record at various levels, but it was has definitely been a niche research area. The idea being that a lot of agents that can be found in in sewage from a community will reflect the practices and health status in that community. So I, probably one of the more recent activities has been to, you know, monitor sewage for drug use, and particularly illicit drug use, which is open some ethical issues, but more relevant to what we're doing. About here has been to look for signals from pathogenic microorganisms that cause human disease and use that as a means of getting a sense of how prevalent that those diseases are in the community are sampling.

David Evans: 5:38

Very interesting. So does this have a long history? Was this developed originally here in Canada? Or where has this been used previously?

Dr. Steve Hrudey, Canadian Water Network: 5:45

there is a fairly long history, it's been primarily used around the world, probably the most effective use has been in monitoring the efforts to eradicate polio by use of the polio vaccine. And so communities have been tracked for the prevalence of polio virus in wastewater as a means of judging how well vaccination programs have been effective.

David Evans: 6:14

Wow I had no idea that it was used all the way back until polio and just to be able to be used on that kind of scale as validation. That's really, really an interesting tool that Yeah, how did I not know about this?

Dr. Steve Hrudey, Canadian Water Network: 6:26

I can say it was pretty much a niche specialty area, I would confess that before spring of this year, I wasn't certainly aware that you could track pathogens in wastewater, and you know, with my primary focus on drinking water, there's been examples in Canada, for example, the North battleford outbreak that happened in 2001, after walkerton they were able to detect the Cryptosporidium pathogen in wastewater from the community before, during and after the outbreak. So, you know, there have been miscellaneous applications out there. But I confess, I wasn't aware that it was being used by World Health Organization and other activities, like with the polio example.

David Evans: 7:16

It's so interesting. So with this kind of surveillance, these samples were the actually collected and how are they analyzed? And what are you testing for? I mean, that's, that's got to be a pretty, pretty rough job going in and grabbing those samples I can imagine.

Dr. Steve Hrudey, Canadian Water Network: 7:34

Well, I mean, the first thing that's, that's essential for this to have any utility is that the virus that you're looking for needs to be shared and feces. So it will show up in you know, the toilet discharge that goes to a sewage system. That was demonstrated early on in the case of of COVID, that we could detect the virus, SARS CoV-2 that causes COVID-19, that it is shed in feces, and therefore, we would expect to find it in sewage. The the first evidence of that, that was published internationally was out of the Netherlands were a group that had been practicing this kind of approach. In the past four different pathogens got the materials, they needed to check for SARS CoV 2 in, wastewater, and they found it essentially, where you sample in a sewer system as a function of the monitoring system you're trying to implement. The easiest method is to do it at a wastewater treatment plant, because they routinely collect samples for regulatory and operations purposes. That's where the group in the Netherlands started this and most groups have started doing the same thing. Because they can just ask for portions of the samples that wastewater treatment plants are already collecting on what's coming into the plant. There are other efforts underway to actually go into the sewer system to try and track sources of infection back upstream. There has been applications for specific institutions like prisons and long term care facilities and so on, where you try and collect the sewage from from a known institution. The sewage samples that are collected then need to be processed, they need to go through a preparation step that's not required for the clinical testing that's typically done. But once the preparation stages is completed, then the analytical stage is very similar to what the clinical testing does, uses something called polymerase chain reaction, or PCR, which is a technique that was discovered a few decades ago that takes advantage of this self replicating capability of of nucleic acids that form the genetic code of life. You can stimulate these to have very tiny amounts of that genetic material replicates itself through various cycles, and every cycle it doubles and so if you go through you know, Dozens of cycles, you can end up converting undetectable amounts of the genetic signal into something you can measure. So that's the essence of the technique.

David Evans: 10:34

Yeah, so you can take something that's really, really small and then grow that to a size where you it's actually traceable.

Dr. Steve Hrudey, Canadian Water Network: 10:40

Right. And so the key thing to understand, and this was an important early question that was being raised by people working in the sewer network or working in treatment plants is, are we dealing with the actual virus, the infective agent, that would put people at risk, or, as it turns out, what we're dealing with is, is measuring portions of the genetic code from that the we don't need the intact virus to be able to detect those portions of the genetic code. And the evidence appears to be that SARS CoV 2 is not particularly stable in sewage systems. And certainly, it poses much less of a risk of infection for for wastewater workers, then the plethora of pathogens, pathogens that are already in there. So, you know, normal personal protective procedures are more than adequate to protect people who are doing the sampling.

David Evans: 11:43

It's good to know, I mean, there's enough stuff already in there to be worried about, let alone putting in more risk for those essential workers. So could you explain a bit more about the role that the Canadian water network is playing in coordinating this new testing process in Canada?

Dr. Steve Hrudey, Canadian Water Network: 12:02

Sure. The Canadian Water Network is an interesting creation, it was founded in 2001. And actually, largely driven by the walkerton experience, and the sort of lack of coordination of water research in Canada, between academic research at universities and the user sector. So it got two cycles of funding under something called the National Centers of Excellence Program of federal government. In through which it established connections between academic researchers and water utilities and people who needed to use that knowledge. After that funding, ran out, it established itself as a knowledge broker for the industry and basically serves in a role to promote exchange of information. So when the pandemic became apparent, and the water utilities who were part of the Canadian Water Network began asking questions, you know, what does this mean for us? And, you know, one of their questions was about the risk to to their workers. But the other thing that became apparent was the this use in in the Netherlands and quickly picked up in several other countries of sampling wastewater for detection of, of SARS, COVID, to the Canadian Water Network, basically established some advisory committees, to and and took it upon itself, to share information amongst people who were capable of doing this kind of work, and providing a window on the international work, because the Canadian Water Network represents Canada on the something called the Global Water research coalition, which represents a number of highly active countries in the water research area.

David Evans: 14:16

Very interesting is a research Coordinating Group that spans all the disciplines there. So I guess the next step is where are we actively monitoring? are we using this kind of technology in Canada right now to monitor wastewater? For SARS Co V 2?

Dr. Steve Hrudey, Canadian Water Network: 14:32

Yes we are. There's a number of groups that, you know, we initially began working with the Canadian Water Network, the the main groups that we got things off the ground with. We're at the BC Centers for Disease Control of Vancouver, the Alberta provincial public health lab and the University of Alberta. in Edmonton. There's also a group at the University of Calgary that's working with public health authorities there. There's a group at the toxicology Research Center in Saskatchewan. The National microbiology lab of the Public Health Agency of Canada, became involved. We were working with researchers at the University of Waterloo, University of Windsor University of Ottawa and cole Polytechnique in Montreal, these are all groups who had the basic capacity to take this kind of work on. At the same time, the Clean Water Network invited people who, you know, would sign on to the principles of our approach. And the currently is 129 different groups and individuals who are part of this coalition that that Canadian Water Network has established. The actual number of communities are being monitored. I can't give you a precise numbers. It differs. in Alberta, the group out of the University of Alberta and the provincial public health lab are monitoring 12 wastewater treatment plants in the province, those it's not 12 community. So because Calgary has three wastewater treatment plants in that group of 12. And the there's two wastewater treatment plants in the Edmonton region that serve from St. Albert through to Edmonton and Sherwood Park.

David Evans: 16:31

Hmm. So I guess if you have only two wastewater treatment facilities in the Edmonton region, and we're only testing there, what can we do with this kind of information? What does it actually tell us? Is it only saying say yes or no, is there COVID present? Or does this actually telling more about the level number of cases on the population that served by that sewer system?

Dr. Steve Hrudey, Canadian Water Network: 16:57

Well, those are good questions. The the original attraction of this technique came from from the original results out of the Netherlands where the pointed out that they actually it appeared that they could give an early warning of the arrival of COVID and community. The reality is that a lot of things have to be right for that to work. And that probably can't be counted upon across the board alone. You know, we've recently had a situation developing in Yellowknife last week, where where they believe that they've got cases in the community that they didn't know about from clinical testing. And so that's caused them to implement more restrictive measures and and require people who have been under quarantine to get tested.

David Evans: 17:58

Yeah, that's valuable.

Dr. Steve Hrudey, Canadian Water Network: 17:59

Yeah. So I mean, the story will be written over time, I have to say that the expectations that this technique would automatically provide warnings wherever it's used, probably won't apply in all cases, because it depends on how frequently you test how quickly you can turn around the results, and how quickly you can communicate those results to the public health authorities. And a lot of places are only sampling once a week. So how much warning Can you give with a once a week warning. And then if you have a two or three day turnaround time in your lab, and then take you another day or two to get the results to public health authorities? You might be able to say retrospectively, that you had an early warning, but

David Evans: 18:50

the cats out of the bag at that point.

Dr. Steve Hrudey, Canadian Water Network: 18:52

Right, exactly. So the idea of using it for Sentinel sites, like with the the old a case where they don't have community spread at the moment, and they they pretty much knew where they had cases and had people quarantined, but they couldn't explain what they saw on the wastewater from, from what they had known about. So you know, that that's an intriguing thing. I think the the other major application which is only in the formative stages here, is to focus on high risk facilities. So there is there is a large new research project being launched in in Edmonton to look at long term care facilities. That's been federally funded. And at the same time, that same federal funding sources, funding studies in Ottawa and Toronto region to you know, basically go into the sewer network and collect the the wastewater directly from a long term care facility. That it sounds good in theory, there's a lot of challenges to overcome to actually make it valuable activity. And there's the reality that I mean, the people out of University of Calgary that have been studying they've done survey's around all of the major hospitals in Calgary. I have discovered retrospectively that the COVID patients in the hospital are usually the ones where they're certainly in intensive care are too ill to be self toileting. So their waste won't show up in the sewage system for the hospital. So when they pick things up, it's probably more indicative of visitors and staff, which is worth knowing. But yeah, there's a lot of complications that go into interpreting the results that you can get from this.

David Evans: 21:03

Yeah, I guess I hadn't considered that, that they're, they're not self toileting at that point of the the people that are of highest risk, I guess,

Dr. Steve Hrudey, Canadian Water Network: 21:10

which is also a concern with long term care facility. So you know, residents who are in diapers aren't going to show up in, in the system.

David Evans: 21:19

Wow, that's a lot. That's a lot to think about a lot of logistics, I'm sure. Especially with, when you have a facility that doesn't have as much use or something, then you've got to there, there's timing issues, let's just say in the pipes and leave it there. So this is clearly a tool that we do have at our disposal. And it's it's currently being figured out what, what kind of role it will play moving forward? Is this a technology that we think will be used more with the covid 19 pandemic, but it's going to be a tool that we could be able to use to react to a future epidemic, and be able to have at our disposal a lot faster as early warning signals?

Dr. Steve Hrudey, Canadian Water Network: 22:01

Yeah. That's an excellent question. Because, you know, given the suddenness of realization that we had to deal with this pandemic, the clinical monitoring, and you know, the wastewater monitoring basically grabbed what was a variable, which is this PCR technology, and anybody that had experience in the area, and in the inclination, you know, tried to apply those that technology. At the same time, there's been a fairly massive research effort around the world to look at, are there other ways to detect pathogens like this, at low levels, and in the group that I work with at the University of Alberta, they got funding, I think, in February, from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research to develop a completely new molecular biology technique, which they've been focusing on the clinical testing, and, and have, basically, they've now published to show that they can get as good or better results, better in the sense of much easier to use, we're able to take out to point of care testing. And when that's compared against the the PCR approach, and so techniques like that may ultimately become useful for the wastewater monitoring as well. But, you know, that's mostly going to be an application for the future. The good news is with with these molecular biology techniques is that, you know, once you've proven that they can work and you get the experience and the equipment necessary to do it. All you need is the genetic code to tackle a different pathogen. Right. Yeah. That I mean, if you think about it, you know, there's been a lot of concern about lack of testing and whatever else for the clinical testing. And, and a lot of that criticism is valid in terms of, you know, particularly south of the border failing to harness the techniques they could have done. But the idea that all you needed, and I mean, the same applies to the development of the vaccine is as soon as you got the genetic code, people were working on it the next day. Yeah. You know that. And that's, that's kind of stunning, in terms of scientific progress, that, that if you have these techniques in place, and someone just has to give you the blueprint, away, you go, and you can start using it. So the fact that we've conducted millions of tests now and clinically, in in less than a year. It's hard to imagine anything else and in previous history where we could have scaled up that quickly.

David Evans: 25:07

Yeah, it's certainly been an impressive, impressive response. And it definitely lays the groundwork for a quick response in the future to future pandemics, some of the drawbacks that you mentioned already. to focus on logistics, so getting the samples, getting those samples to be tested. And then once the tests are complete getting those messages in a timeline that is valuable to then make decisions. I'm curious, is cost a major factor at this point? And is that a barrier for further implementation?

Dr. Steve Hrudey, Canadian Water Network: 25:37

Well, the cost is always going to be a factor because it's, obviously nothing is free. I think a larger constraint, if we wanted to implement it everywhere, the constraint would be in terms of the number of skilled people and access to equipment and even moreso access to reagents that are part of the analytical scheme. That's one of the challenges that that we've run into with our partners. And all of this is that some of the critical reagents, they need to do the analysis are in demand everywhere. And there's been supply chain issues. For sure, conceptually, the cost thing, and that's one of the reasons there's been as much investment as her husband is the idea of being able to collect a single sample for an entire community that might tell you something useful, compared with having to try and sample everybody clinically in that community. You know, you don't need to be a math

David Evans: 26:40

to figure out, exactly,

Dr. Steve Hrudey, Canadian Water Network: 26:42

there's a lot fewer analyses involved. Clearly the The trick is, how useful is the information you get, and that's very much context specific. But yeah, cost is not the primary barrier, you know, the the Netherlands who started this whole thing are now basically covering almost their entire population in the country, you know, every wastewater plant that they have is, is, is being monitored, the the cost for plant is is not a huge factor, where things get more challenging is when you want to take on this idea of sampling in the sewer network. Because Sam sampling and sewers is a dangerous activity, you know, there it is, and sulfide as produced in sewers, and that can kill people. there any kind of confined space activity is obviously, a major concern. So, you know, clearly can't do that kind of sampling without using the trained professionals who normally are engaged, which again, is a limited supply, and somebody has to pay for that time, you know, for them doing that versus whatever else they they would normally be doing. So,

David Evans: 28:04

yeah, yeah, it definitely adds another another risk level and another whole level to that kind of testing. Now, this kind of leads me to my final question, and I have to ask it, do we have to worry about the SARS COVID to virus in our water supply? So if I turn on my tap, right now, do I have to worry about the virus that survived going through a wastewater treatment facility? Is this something that people should be concerned about?

Dr. Steve Hrudey, Canadian Water Network: 28:34

Well, finally, I've got some good news for you. The answer to that one is a definite No. The reality is, it doesn't look like SARS. Kofi tos survives intact that is in a in a state build, allow it to infect someone, even in reaching the wastewater treatment plant. And certainly, in in going through a wastewater treatment plant. There's not a concern. And then, you know, frankly, if if the discharge for wastewater treatment plant was going directly back into your water treatment plant, you'd have other things to worry about. The reality is that there's so drinking water practice requires that you maintain some some distance and separation between a wastewater discharge and a drinking water intake. And then the drinking water goes through additional treatment, all of which would in activates this virus if it got anywhere near that. So I mean, that's probably one of the things we have to give no thought to. It's drinking water is entirely safe when it comes to surgical v2.

David Evans: 29:50

Alright, everyone listening to this can sleep well tonight, and drink well as well. I would just like to thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us. I've learned a lot and it's it's pretty incredible. This this tool that we have at our disposal, and hopefully it can be retooled quickly in the future if if we should need it. And it can be deployed efficiently.

Dr. Steve Hrudey, Canadian Water Network: 30:15

Yeah, the reality is it's not if but when We'll have another one. Hopefully, hopefully, it'll be more like 100 years instead of another year. But clearly having these capabilities in the future is going to be important.

David Evans: 30:29

I was saying that in a hopeful tone that guess. Where can listeners find out more about your important research and more about the Canadian water network?

Dr. Steve Hrudey, Canadian Water Network: 30:40

Well, CWN keeps a very good way to a ebsite. It's just CWN-RCE which s just the French version of tha. So if you just go to wwe.cw-rce.ca, you'll get right there And it's very user friendly si e.

David Evans: 31:01

Awesome well than you so much for taking the ime to speak with us today. Y ah, everyone does keep safe and tay socially distant. Awesome. Thank

Dr. Steve Hrudey, Canadian Water Network: 31:09

Okay, you're welcome.

David Evans: 31:14

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, check out the show notes, because I'll leave links for the Canadian water network so you can find what they're doing, and learn more from their awesome website. Thanks so much to Dr. Steve for taking the time to speak with me. And going through all the technical difficulties that are associated with long distance interviews. I really appreciate it. I also really appreciate the team from the Canadian Water Network for being so supportive and helping to share the message. Thank you so much, guys, you guys are awesome. Keep up the great work. And that's our show for today. Thank you so much for listening. Please subscribe so you don't miss any of our future episodes coming out. Leave us a rating and review. It means so much to us to hear back from all of our listeners. I'm the host and producer David Evans. And I would just like to thank the rest of the team from the aquatic biosphere project, specifically to Paula Polman, S phie Cervera, and Anna Bettini. hanks for all of your help. To earn more about the aquatic iosphere project and what we're oing here in Alberta telling he story of water. Check us out t aquatic biosphere.ca. And if ou have any questions or omments about the show, we'd ove to hear them. Email us at onservation@aquaticbios here.org. Please don't forg t to like, subscribe and leav us a review. It really help us out get excited for next Monday when we release our next storytelling episode all abou seawater desalination. We talk d to Heather Cooley from the acific Institute about wate stress. How many cities acro s the world are actually abou to run out of water, and how eawater desalination might be a le to help. And don't forg t we have our global ghost gear initiative deep dive epis de coming out tomorrow our inte view with Joel Baziuk. And the on Thursday we have our int rview with Ally and Bourton fro the Emerald sea protectio society. We're learning abou ghosts nets for the rest of t e week and I love it. Get r ady for those too. Thanks for l stening to the water we doing p dcast and until next time. I's been a splash!