WastewaterSCAN, one of the United States’ largest private entities that provide real-time data on pathogens in wastewater, has stopped collecting data from 43 facilities due to “resource constraints,” according to emails the company sent to staff overseeing these sites.
The group — based at Stanford University, in partnership with Emory University — had been collecting samples from 194 sites in 41 states and the District of Columbia, a swath including 39 million people. Alexandria Boehm, one of the founders and a Stanford University professor of civil and environmental engineering, said the program is shifting gears to focus on other projects that would “disrupt” the wastewater monitoring industry. They will still collect and publish data from 151 sites and have no plans to further reduce that tally.
WastewaterSCAN started with eight facilities in 2020 and expanded through philanthropic funding from the Sergey Brin Family Foundation and Bloomberg Philanthropies. On whether a funding cut led to the pull back, Boehm said, “The funders have been extremely generous and supportive of this work in a way that I am just amazed at. I don’t really have an answer for you.”
Wastewater monitoring has been quite valuable during the Covid pandemic, which is why some experts worry that WastewaterSCAN pulling back could signal a reduced appetite for funding it. It’s not limited to private investors, either — the main federal wastewater monitoring program lacks a dedicated funding source for the future. And a changing political climate adds to the uncertainty, especially at a time when infectious disease experts are closely tracking the bird flu outbreak in cattle.
The use of wastewater surveillance expanded and improved after Covid swept the nation in 2020 and citizens and scientists needed more information to stay safe. The information shed in the toilet can offer communities a glimpse at the caseload, days in advance. And for the fifth straight summer, Covid cases are on the rise again — especially in Western states. Deaths remain low, but hospitalizations are increasing and the threat of long Covid remains present.
A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention spokesperson said that they do not expect this data loss, as a result of WastewaterSCAN reducing the number of sites they monitor, to significantly impact the agency’s National Wastewater Surveillance System.
“CDC is actively working with impacted states to provide opportunities to add sites through the CDC national wastewater testing contract where appropriate, ensuring comprehensive and continuous monitoring,” they wrote in an email.
The CDC’s surveillance system conducts the lionshare of wastewater monitoring in the country. They also provided a financial seed that many states used to start their own systems. But the system is only funded through 2025. Syracuse University epidemiologist David Larsen is not particularly optimistic about the program’s survival should former President Donald Trump win in November.
“Drying up is not quite the right term, because [wastewater surveillance] is not going away,” said Larsen, who has helped New York scale its monitoring system. “But it is reducing.”
The NWSS collects data from roughly 1,400 facilities and includes information from state and local health departments, many of which have their own programs. But the CDC’s data is limited, as protocols and techniques for analyzing samples may vary from entity to entity. The CDC also only analyzes a few pathogens: SARS-CoV-2, mpox, Influenza A, H5.
Meanwhile, WastewaterSCAN monitors more pathogens and at higher frequencies than the CDC. This proved extremely handy for capturing the country’s mpox outbreak and the H5N1 outbreak earlier this year, said Marc Johnson, a virologist at the University of Missouri.
“The CDC can’t just snap their fingers and have Nebraska have a new H5 lab. It gets tricky,” said Johnson, who also compared the CDC to a slow-moving tank. “But [WastewaterSCAN] gets there.”
Johnson, who helps run Missouri’s in-state surveillance program, does not think that a private company losing 43 facilities will dramatically alter the country’s daily and weekly pathogen snapshots. However, he does think that wastewater surveillance needs to be more evenly distributed around the country, and WastewaterSCAN does fill some geographical gaps.
“We’re studying the hell out of certain parts of the country while ignoring others,” he said.
WastewaterSCAN collects over a third of its samples from California facilities. They pulled out of more than half of its 59 sites in California. This reduction spooked Patrick Vaughan, an engineer living in Northern California. He checks wastewater surveillance programs every morning with his coffee, so when he saw the update on WastewaterSCAN’s website, he was filled with dread.
“I think being scared of [Covid] is a very normal response,” said Vaughan. “The greatest threat that covid poses is the mass disabling of our society.”
Boehm said they reduced their California share because nearby facilities often don’t capture a meaningful difference in the viral load in neighboring communities. However, she acknowledged that this outlook varies among pathogens.
WastewaterSCAN is not the only private wastewater surveillance group. Biobot Analytics is a startup who has been tracking pathogens since 2020 and had a federal contract to analyze sample data for the CDC. That contract unexpectedly ended in 2023 and was instead awarded to Verily, a Google offshoot. Verily processes samples for WastewaterSCAN, as well, but the two programs are separate.
Another reason why Vaughan is stressed about the reduction is that WastewaterSCAN and Biobot provide more consistent data, as they have been testing exactly the same way since the beginning — compared to the CDC, whose data arrives from many different entities. Vaughan feels like the CDC’s data is less reliable.
“We keep losing data and this is our last solid tool for knowing what’s happening,” he said. “I don’t wanna see other people get disabled by it and I personally don’t wanna get disabled by it.”