Toronto Public Health is in the process of creating a wastewater monitoring initiative to identify potential disease spread during the upcoming FIFA World Cup. Dr. Michelle Murti, Toronto’s new Medical Officer of Health, announced the launch of a pilot program aimed at gathering sewage samples from areas where fans gather and analyzing them for infections like COVID-19, influenza, and RSV. The public health unit is also exploring the feasibility of monitoring other illnesses such as measles in wastewater due to the anticipated large international audience during the event.
According to Murti, integrating wastewater surveillance into their data collection methods will enhance the overall safety measures in place to protect the health of attendees. The city is expecting approximately 300,000 out-of-town visitors during the six World Cup matches scheduled to begin in June.
Following the conclusion of Ontario’s COVID-19 wastewater surveillance program last year, Dr. Fahad Razak, an internal medicine specialist at St. Michael’s Hospital, emphasized the importance of continuing such initiatives beyond the pandemic era. He commended the decision to implement this technology on a vast scale like the World Cup to address the gap left by the provincial program’s termination.
Razak highlighted the potential for ongoing disease detection beyond COVID-19, citing Windsor-Essex County’s successful use of wastewater surveillance to identify a measles outbreak earlier this year. He further proposed the application of this monitoring method for opioid surveillance to detect any contaminated drug supplies during the World Cup, emphasizing the life-saving implications of timely interventions.
Dr. Lawrence Goodridge, co-lead of the Guelph Wastewater Epidemiology Lab for Public Health, expressed concerns over the discontinuation of the province’s broader wastewater program and the subsequent reliance on smaller-scale initiatives. While acknowledging the potential benefits of the pilot program in managing potential outbreaks during the World Cup, he pointed out its limitation in scope due to the mobility of attendees across the city and province.
Dr. Murti emphasized that the pilot program will serve as a valuable learning experience to evaluate the effectiveness of wastewater surveillance for future large-scale events in Toronto.
