Wastewater sequencing flushes out vital health data

During the COVID-19 pandemic, wastewater surveillance became crucial for monitoring the spread of the disease. The CDC launched the National Wastewater Surveillance System in September 2020, which now gathers and analyzes samples for over 800 US health departments from local sewage treatment plants. This success sparked interest and funding for wastewater testing, driving rapid advances. Traditional methods like cell culture, immunoassays, and PCR are insufficient for detecting water-borne pathogens like cryptosporidium and enteroviruses. However, metagenomics can provide a complete and unbiased census of microbial species and antimicrobial resistance genes. This powerful approach is driving a shift away from PCR-based testing, which is now expected to be obsolete soon.