Instead

22– Flushed to a testing site, finding coronavirus in wastewater, with Dr. Roper & Dr. Sims | Day 99

June 18, 2020 Episode 22
Instead
22– Flushed to a testing site, finding coronavirus in wastewater, with Dr. Roper & Dr. Sims | Day 99
Show Notes Transcript Chapter Markers

The results of an April study between UofU, BYU, and USU have a surprising outcome -  testing waste may be able to predict future coronavirus outbreaks. The most recent cache valley/Hyrum surge in cases was detected the week before confirmed cases started to rise. Join me Wyatt as he talks to two of the scientists involved in the study from the USU Biological Engineering Department - Department Head Keith Roper and Director of the Huntsman Environmental Research Center Ronald Sims.

https://youtu.be/2JCUBpyITyk?t=2005


Wyatt: [00:00:00] Last year, professor Ryan DuPont took me on a tour of the Hiram city wastewater treatment plant, which may not sound like fun to you. But if I can be given a tour of a process once featured in an episode of the magic school bus, I'm going to do it. They did make a little video of Dr. DuPont giving me a tour.

There's a link in the description before you go and watch that listen to this interview because researchers have been collecting samples of untreated wastewater. So. They can test entire communities for COVID-19. Okay. I'm just going to have to be a third grader about this for a second. We've got some smart people trying to find evidence of pooped out viruses to me.

They're trying to find. A really annoying needle in a really smelly haystack, but maybe a needle in a haystack is the wrong metaphor. Maybe they're just trying to see the lightning before everybody else hears the thunder. So join me. As I talked to two scientists involved in this project from the USU biological engineering department to department head Keith Roper and director of the Huntsman environmental research center.

Ronald Simms. Hello, my name is Wyatt Tropper and you could be watching these into episode five of one of the greatest cartoons ever made, but you are listening to this instead.

Tell me a little bit about the work that it's taken to get, to get you to where you are now and like kind of what work still needs to be done.

Dr. Roper: [00:01:43] So the first step was to coordinate with the wastewater facilities for samples to be taken. There's three universities involved in this study, university of Utah state.

They were required to submit that protocol to the institution of bio safety for review, because. SARS is a highly transmissible pathogen, sorry to ensure those protocols are conducted in a way that avoids transmission. 

Wyatt: [00:02:09] Okay. That was the voice of Dr. Keith Roper. And you're about to hear the voice of Dr.

Ron Sims and because they're working on helping out with this pandemic. Okay. Some research projects can take years. And you're about to hear from Dr. Bronson's explaining how they started pulling in results. After just a few months, Ron specialty is counting bacteria in wastewater. And there's about a billion bacteria per milliliter of the stuff.

So he knows where to get the wastewater. He knows how to count bacteria and he's got the equipment to 

Dr. Sims: [00:02:43] do it. As Dr. Roper was talking about, we can respond rapidly. We have a, we have a, an industrial approach. With the, especially to help the state with the idea of rapid response. So instead of making this a year long research project, uh, with Dr.

Roper's expertise and with my background in wastewater wastewater treatment and the laboratory, we were ready to pull together his expertise in virology and then our laboratory equipment protocols background to make this thing. Work rapidly. It's a rapid response. And because I also work with the Utah department of environmental quality in a number of projects, but most recently with a Sino bacteria are toxic algae blooms also have a relationship with them and because this was a need.

From the Utah department of environmental quality. And because of my background in public health, I have a very, uh, strong interest to say, we can solve this. We can do this. Uh, we can make this work, let's say. And, um, with the surrounding communities, we have students, we have faculty, we have staff. From Hiram, Treemont, and Logan, that this was going to be something of value, a real value.

Wyatt: [00:04:02] So Dr. Sims is all about public health and water quality. And Dr. Roper is all about viruses. Let's hear more about that. 

Dr. Roper: [00:04:11] So my work with viruses started in the 1990s. We were looking on working with a number of infectious pathogens, including the HIV virus, as well as influenza virus. Chicken. Yeah. 

Wyatt: [00:04:26] Yeah. And did you think that you would ever be, um, searching for viral material within wastewater treatment plants?

Or is this kind of a whole new ball game for you? I would 

Dr. Roper: [00:04:36] answer no. When I first heard that people were looking for virus and wastewater, I was skeptical that they could find it in a quantitative and reproducible manner. Those samples, as, as Ron indicated, are highly complex and undefined samples that vary significantly from.

From sample to sample. And so. The idea that once a detect measurable levels and quantitative reproducible way, for me, someone who's dealt with all my experiences inside the clinic, working with viruses, I was pretty skeptical, but I got on board because I saw the need and the value potentially for the community for cache Valley in the state of Utah and with assistance from Ron and getting started with some of the equipment and procedures necessary to do that.

I've now come 180 degrees. And I think when the Assa is run, Carefully that one can get both quantitative and meaningful data in advance of the clinical data that provide resources to direct some of the attention in terms of testing and communications that need to be done to the newscast. 

Wyatt: [00:05:41] Yeah. So where are we on the process as of today of collecting this information, 

Dr. Roper: [00:05:47] the department of environmental quality here in your top coordinated, a study, which was, which took place in April and may.

That result is now published. You saw the website and the press release on that. The department submitted a application to extend the study from July one to the end of September, we studied 10 wastewater facilities. We wanted to extend it to. Cover, I think on the order of 40 wastewater facilities with some search capacity, that proposal appears to have been received with a lot of enthusiasm by both the department of health and the state and local bear river health, the governor's office.

So that we've been at. Not only asked to extend the study potentially to the end of the year, but also to begin this loop. And so when you're starting to look at increasing the resolution of the study, instead of looking at the entire watershed that flows into one wastewater treatment facility, we're going to break that up and look at individual.

Communities that have that interconnect with the wastewater conduit. If you will look at those intersection points to have a finer grid resolution on where the infections are. 

Wyatt: [00:07:05] So what kind of findings happened to the first study and where were people involved, able to detect COVID-19 within the, within the plant that you were able to find everywhere?

Was it especially clear in the salt Lake and you talk County? Yeah, so 

Dr. Roper: [00:07:20] initially it was detected and it was looked for in wastewater treatment facilities in summit County, in salt Lake, because that's where the initial cases and the, to place. And it appears that the levels in the wastewater tended to, to increase as the clinical cases increased.

Generally speaking, as the study was expanded levels of Corona virus, SARS, cov two were detected and all of the wastewater treatment facilities over the two months of the study in greater or lesser amounts. I think what was really significant is that in the last few samples of the study, that there was a significant increase detected in cache Valley and those data were taken and sampled before the large increase in clinical cases.

I think that's, what's motivating the current. 

Wyatt: [00:08:11] So as we do this, we might, that kind of means that we should be able to detect a surge from the wastewater before we detect it from people going in for tests, um, at the normal testing facilities. It 

Dr. Roper: [00:08:23] appears that the virus is shed in the species before the clinical symptoms become significant enough that people submit themselves with tests.

Wyatt: [00:08:31] Oh, wow. That's cool. Um, so Dr. Sims, as, uh, Dr. Roper talked about increasing the resolution of this study, are we talking about like community level, like, cause I know that like Logan and Hiram have different wastewater treatment plants, are we talking even more fine grained than 

Dr. Roper: [00:08:49] that? 

Dr. Sims: [00:08:49] So, yes, what we can do is take what, uh, Dr.

Roper has, uh, developed when it all arrives at the treatment plant, but before it gets there, For instance, Logan city serves seven different communities in the area. So we can now back it up closer to where each community provides their contribution of wastewater. We can intercept the wastewater before it's all mixed into the lagoons, but coming out of each community and then identify.

The shedding of the viruses as Dr. Roper said, uh, pick it up a week before symptoms occur. And we could even go to resolution. Dr. Roper's talked about, uh, the, the individual buildings, the Utah water research laboratory, the space dynamics laboratory, and even potentially on campus, each individual dorm, because each dorm has an exit pipe.

Carrying wastewater from the dorm. And especially with students who may be asymptomatic. They'll shed the virus. And so we can potentially, now we could detect the virus even when they're asymptomatic, but know that a particular dorm or building or business, uh, for any of the businesses that are concerned.

This could get much more discreet and we can refine, uh, where the source of the COVID-19 is coming from early in the game. So I guess I'm calling it Sentinel tracing where we could then identify a week early in the day. Then we can take measures for isolation or whatever it needs to be from a public health protection point of view.

Wyatt: [00:10:31] Yeah. Yeah. I'm a little curious about like, just assuming that, because this is a desert state, that our wastewater system is different than it, than it is like back East. Um, and a state that like gets rain all the time. I have no idea is Utah set up well to be. Like that we've been able to do this so fast or have there been challenges that we've had to deal with that other States have?

Um, 

Dr. Sims: [00:10:56] I'm sure it does. I'm sure Dr. Robert can talk about the challenges because there are, there are challenges. However, the wastewater in terms of municipal wastewater is fairly similar. Uh, here compared to other places, as you say, when they have rain that's runoff and the rain runs off, and some cities have collectors that collect the runoff and diverted away from the treatment plant so that it doesn't dilute out all the wastewater.

Uh, but the characteristics of wastewater are more similar than they are different. From community to community in terms of the organic material and the bacteria that are there, because everybody pretty much the proteins, the carbohydrates, the steak, the breakfast, they're more similar across the country.

Uh, showers, those sources of wastewater are more similar than dissimilar. In fact, in Logan, our wastewater tends to be more dilute. Then many other treatment plants because of the irrigation and inflow, it's called inflow from the surrounding soil would actually dilutes out our wastewater, but we can still, Dr.

Roper is still picked up the virus there cause there's enough of them in the water. So the wastewater is more similar across communities and the country. Then it is dissimilar. And, um, yeah, we, based on my background and history of finding the needle in the haystack with wastewater, uh, whether those are bacteria in the wastewater or chemicals at trace levels, I had some confidence that we would be able to do this.

And then when Dr. Roper put his techniques to that, he was actually able to confirm that this is a, this is a protocol that works to 

Wyatt: [00:12:41] me. This seems like a brand new. Crazy. Awesome. Solution of looking into wastewater for pathogens. Is this similar to stuff that's been done in the past that I'm just not aware of or is this kind of a completely new thing?

So it's not 

Dr. Sims: [00:12:55] completely new, but in terms of viruses, it is new. We have looked for other pathogens like E coli, the common gut bacteria, uh, in wastewater to look at levels of coli and we have to treat the waste water. To reduce the Cola by usually by adding chlorine or UV in order to get the amount of Eco-Line down in the water.

That's discharged, let's say to lakes, reservoirs receiving systems, looking for the viruses in the wastewater is new. And this particular virus is very new. Uh, the idea was we have, we have used wastewater is tracers. Historically, but we have not done them for this type of trace analysis for the virus.

Because as I mentioned, there's a billion bacteria, but Dr. Roper's finding maybe a thousand or 2000 of viral RNA strands per mil, much lower, but our, our instrumentation has gotten better. So we're able to detect elements in the wastewater at lower lower levels. So in terms of viruses, yes, this type is a new.

Tool new technique that's been developed, we've usually chased or traced in the wastewater, uh, gross or meaning large amounts of organic chemicals that would kill fish or, or, uh, nutrients, nitrogen phosphorous, fertilizers that would grow algae. Yeah. 

Dr. Roper: [00:14:20] This 

Wyatt: [00:14:20] is kind of the first time that. We're studying to figure out what's going on and help what's upstream versus out versus to help what's down stream.

Dr. Sims: [00:14:31] You said it precisely. You got it. That's exactly right. This is a public health protection project on the upstream side, whereas historically it's been protecting public health on the downstream side. So you're operating more like the medical industry than traditionally the, uh, the wastewater treatment industry.

Dr. Roper: [00:14:49] Yes. 

Wyatt: [00:14:50] Hi, Dr. Roper, um, what has made this possible to find viruses in wastewater? Like I still have a hard time believing that it's possible, even though you both are looking at me and telling me that you did it. 

Dr. Roper: [00:15:06] Yeah. So a couple of interesting things, I think in particular about this virus and then new technology that's emerged.

So this particular virus infects epithelial cells and. Initially infects upper respiratory cells and then lower respiratory empathy and a large number of patients and also affects the epithelial cells, which line the gastrointestinal tract. So your epithelial cells think about them as the skin on the inside of your organs, inside of 

Wyatt: [00:15:41] the giant tube, right?

Dr. Roper: [00:15:43] The receptor, the H two receptor you may have heard about it's targeted by the spike protein on this virus. Is present on epithelial cells in all those places. And so that means that the virus can find the own. Erik then bind to that ACE two receptor, you take it into the cell and start to multiply progeny just as effectively in the epithelial track as testing ultra gastrointestinal, just like it does a respiratory attack.

So that makes it possible to consider detecting the virus from the gut. It turns out that in a large, a significant number of patients, not all apparently, but a significant number of patients that shedding in the GI tract begins to recur before the shedding, the respiratory tract and persists for a period of weeks after the respiratory infections have been clear.

And the sputum samples no longer show the viral, our main patients are discharged from the hospital. So in fact, Corona virus gives us a huge potential for detecting weight because of that steeple shedding both before and well, after we have the infection in the lungs. Yeah. 

Wyatt: [00:17:02] Yeah. Thank you, Dr. Roper, Dr.

Sims. Um, can you tell me a little bit more about Utah state university's role in this project? I know that, um, university of Utah and BYU has also been involved. Is this like. Man to man, as in we're taking care of like Northern Utah places, or is it kind of like a zone defense where everybody's doing a specific job when it comes to this project?

Dr. Sims: [00:17:27] Well, you know what, and Dr. Robert can come in and does too, but it's divided up into three groups in Utah. We're on the Northern, we're in the Northern group here. So. The biological engineering department, um, we're working with, uh, Treemont and Hiram and Logan. We've got those three. Then the university of Utah has a set around salt Lake city, and then we've got BYU involved, farther South.

So we did regionally break it up. And I think that was, I believe that was the Utah department of environmental quality who strategized to break these into three regions and, uh, Dr. Roper can comment since he was involved in that group formation and continued kind of discussion. But that's how we got involved as with the, uh, the biological engineering department and Utah state in Northern Utah.

It made sense that we would do Hiram and trimaran and Logan,

Dr. Roper: [00:18:23] one of the questions is why can you, why can you find viral RNA wastewater? And the answer to that question is. It's it, it depends on a number of factors. It depends on what else is in the wastewater will, dilution is run on down, but the virus also has a finite lifetime under a variety of different conditions.

And so my lab has been working to look at the effect of different temperatures, different wastewater, streams, different storage conditions in preserving the activity of the virus to determine whether that has an influence on our ability to monitor it. As Ron indicated, one of the reasons why we have three universities participate in is because if you take a sample of a wastewater and Logan and transport that by automobile, down to university of Utah, we want you to analyze there's an additional two, maybe three hours of transport time involved there.

In which time your virus continues to decay and clear CAS, it continues to be. Chewed up by nucleuses, which are ubiquitous in the environment. So your signal is decreasing probably exponentially when that virus enters the wastewater system and percolates down in Utah and NAFTA hold up times for our sewer systems are relatively short.

So when someone flushes the toilet in North Logan, that water can reach the Logan wastewater treatment plant within a window of four to five hours. If we were in. Georgia or example where those elevations are significantly lower. It can take up the torn four hours with those significantly lower changes in elevation where that wastewater to make it all this way.

I think that's helping us probably get some stronger signals, although that remains to be validated 

Wyatt: [00:20:12] experimental, like, I guess it's obvious that you were testing for the virus here in your lab, but. I guess I'm just so used to having to send things off, to get tested because of like ancestry.com or whatever, and just like you can't, there's no like local photo film places anymore, but so you have to send it off.

So I think that that's a good thing to be told is that the testing is actually taking place, you know, here in Logan at Utah state university, I guess my final question is so you're detecting viral DNA in the wastewater system. And when I think of other developments in the field of DNA testing, I think of genealogical DNA that was able to like track down the golden state killer.

Do you think that this could get to the point where if you like suspected that like there was a fugitive and Logan that you could test to see if he took a crap here somewhere? 

Dr. Roper: [00:21:04] I think that the public imagination, because of the success of this particular approach, I think it opens the door to a lot of potential for looking at wastewater, both to serve the public health, as well as the public in a number of ways.

I, I think we'll be much more quick in the future when situations like this arise to look at wastewater as a Sentinel, as, as run point phrase. To alert us about the potential for preventing harm or transmission as, as well as potentially for forensic applications. Like you indicated Ron, you're chuckling too.

Dr. Sims: [00:21:46] Yeah. Good, good comment. Why we can oftentimes trace caffeine. You can find caffeine in the wastewater. So there have been people that have played with different, uh, let's say sources, human sources of chemicals that ended up in wastewater. Caffeine is a common one and a final comment I'd like to make, to, to increase the, uh, public confidence.

Is that. The virus does not appear to go out the other end of the wastewater treatment plant. In other words, we're capturing it and we're recording it, identifying it on the what's coming in to the treatment plant, but the treatment plants appear to have the capacity to destroy. Any infectivity as it goes through the system, you know, you might have people that say, Oh my goodness, can I go swimming in the Lake?

Or can I take my boat out? Or can I go enjoy? Yes. Based on what we know so far, the virus doesn't survive through the wastewater treatment system. 

Dr. Roper: [00:22:48] Yeah. Yeah. So 

Wyatt: [00:22:50] like, I know that other drugs and chemicals can be detected from wastewater treatment plants. Do you think that that kind of data could be used to like target social services and like support for communities that maybe have like an opiate problem within their community and other things like that?

Dr. Sims: [00:23:05] Yes, definitely. Definitely. Well, the, the ideas, um, as you say, where there's a public health issue, uh, Dr. Rover would say where there's an outbreak, where there is some reason. Because it does cost money. It's a resources issue. So when there's a good reason to go in and evaluate, for instance, out of a hospital, Pfizer, Pfizer hex is an old, it's been, uh, outlawed for a number of years, but that was a, um, disinfected used in hospitals.

And that could be traced to the effluence coming out of hospitals, the amount of Pfizer X, they use terms of, uh, the patients and the impact on the environment. So yes, where there's a need. To protect the public health. It appears that like this, we can develop the technology. And now we have methods to do trace analysis of chemicals and microbes that we can come up with new, um, new protocols and new methods to detect, uh, chemicals of concern from a public health point of view.

You bet. 

Wyatt: [00:24:04] Yeah. Okay. And then Dr. Roper, you left me with like, you didn't answer my question. Well enough, I guess, because I just want to know. Do you think you could eventually pick up like a specific person's DNA and the wastewater, or is that just too small of a needle in a haystack? Great 

Dr. Roper: [00:24:20] question.

There's there's evidence to suggest that it could be possible, but challenge. Is that it's, it would be orders of magnitude more difficult than analyzing for virus because in the cases, virus, we're talking about multiple individuals in that, in that watershed. All contributing to the signal, if that makes sense.

Yeah. Unifying one individual in a pool of, in, in the watershed here in cache, Valerie, we have approximately 50,000, I think Hiram serves about 9,009,000 homes in the higher area. So maybe 36, 40,000 people. Can you pick out the DNA from one individual among 40,000 in a dilute wastewater stream? That's a real needle in the haystack.

The chances of being able to do that are orders of magnitude smaller than virus, but we were surprised with virus. And so I think if we took the question open, Oh, 

Wyatt: [00:25:23] wow. That's things get crazier. I was ready for you to just be like, no, that's insane, dude. Thank you both for your time. This is interesting.

I'm so happy. I was able to get you on the horn so quickly. Okay. So if finding Corona virus in the waste stream is like finding a needle in a haystack, finding one person's DNA would be like, Trying to find a needle in 10,000 haystacks, but still it's a fascinating possibility. And if that possibility freaks you out a little bit, you should listen today.

83 of this podcast collecting data on city dwellers. I know that saying that this pandemic has been a major bummer is an understatement, but I'm excited that one of the silver linings around it, it's developing the capability to use wastewater. As an information source for public health. Thank you for listening to this episode, please share it with a friend and subscribe to this podcast so that you'll be notified when our next episode is posted.

That next episode will be with Dr. Jeanie Thomas a folklorist we'll be talking about legends. And what legends say about the people who created them? This episode of instead was edited by Nick Vasquez, Abigail Stewart, and me Wyatt Tropper is part of our work. And the office of research at Utah state university. .

 

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