The Role of Wastewater Data in Pandemic Management

Since the Covid-19 pandemic began, hundreds of communities have begun monitoring their wastewater for the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Wastewater surveillance offers unique advantages over traditional disease surveillance. Because the data are inherently collected at a community level, they provide broad population coverage in a cost-effective manner, with one sample representing the infections of hundreds, or even millions of residents. Wastewater monitoring can capture asymptomatic infections and does not require people to have the means or will to get tested, yielding a more objective measure of Covid-19 levels in a community than case counts.

Despite the rapid growth in wastewater monitoring over the past two years, some public health agencies still lack the capacity to do so, and others struggle with how to interpret and use the data for pandemic management. To better understand the barriers and catalysts to implementing wastewater monitoring programs, The Rockefeller Foundation, Pandemic Prevention Institute and Mathematica developed a survey to assess the role of wastewater data in pandemic management.

This nationally representative survey of state and local public health decision makers focused on 5 core areas: 1) factors influencing pandemic management decisions and actions; 2) the landscape of wastewater monitoring in respondents’ jurisdictions; 3) barriers, supports, and capacity for wastewater programming; 4) awareness and value of the data; and 5) future interest in wastewater monitoring for public health.