Welp. That's the end of COVID wastewater data in my county.

Last year I noticed that the CDC's COVID wastewater data map indicated "No Recent Data" for my sewershed since mid-November 2024. I finally called the Lynden Public Works office (twice) to get an answer for why. This was the response they sent me:

"I had a talk with our Plants superintendent regarding the wastewater testing and reporting to the CDC. I was informed that this was done during the pandemic with some grant money that was available. This was stopped once the pandemic came to an end and there was no more grant money.

There is talk at the treatment plants on whether they would like to start this process again though and may be brought back on in the future."

Sometime between today and yesterday, the dot on the CDC map for my nearest sewershed collection area (#2124 Whatcom County) disappeared.

I'm going to lobby my city's public works department to take over data collection from that jurisdiction. We deserve to know the level of COVID (and other pathogens) circulating in our community.

#Healthcare #CDC #COVID #COVIDIsNotOver #Wastewater #H5N1

How many people died from #COVID19? Probably more than 20 million. The World Health Organization #WHO has said member countries reported more than 7 million #deaths from COVID-19 but the true death toll is estimated to be at least three times higher. Data is no longer collected other than #wastewater. In the U.S., an average of about 900 people a week have died of COVID-19 over the past year, according to the #CDC. #publichhealth #pandemic #facts #wearamask please https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/5-years-after-it-appeared-things-we-know-and-still-dont-know-about-covid

In case you're not sure what's up with respiratory diseases like #COVID and #Flu (#influenza), it's worthwhile to take a look at the CDC #wastewater surveillance:

https://www.cdc.gov/nwss/rv/InfluenzaA-nationaltrend.html

I'll be asking my kids to wear a KN95 / KF94 mask daily for the next 3 weeks at school.

Greetings all, it’s the weekly #washingtonstate #kingcounty (that is, #seattle and environs) #COVID #COVID19 #wastewater toots.

Let's start with the West Point (WSPT) sewage treatment plant: the Sars-CoV-2 7-day rolling average came back down to its recent fairly low numbers this week after a bump up last week. The last 7DRA number was calculated on 12/22.

WSPT is one of three King County(-ish) sewersheds in this dataset. You can find overviews, individual sewershed results, and a breakdown of variants for the state wastewater surveillance program, along with other metrics like case counts and hospitalizations for Covid-19 and other respiratory illnesses, at https://doh.wa.gov/data-and-statistical-reports/diseases-and-chronic-conditions/communicable-disease-surveillance-data/respiratory-illness-data-dashboard#WasteWater. If you go to the page and click "learn more" in the statewide view tab, you can find out lots of details about how these data are calculated and how to interpret them. The dashboard gets updated every Wednesday (generally).

Note: when the state switched over to new data providers in September, they also removed the previous historical data from the graphical interface. That's because the two providers used different methodologies that made direct comparisons difficult. Unfortunately, it also removed valuable context for interpreting the results. So, keep in mind we're just seeing what happened in September 2023 until now.

Barbados has successfully completed an unprecedented debt-for climate operation to finance water and sewage projects resilient to climate change. #financing #water #wastewater #resiliency #climatechange #infrastructure #Barbados https://smartwatermagazine.com/news/inter-american-development-bank-idb/barbados-pioneers-global-first-debt-climate-resilience