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Cedar Rapids, Iowa 52401
State Hygienic Lab now testing Iowa wastewater for flu virus
Coralville lab is one of five new wastewater-based epidemiology centers of excellence
The State Hygienic Lab in Coralville now can test wastewater for influenza, which gives public health officials advance warning of a spike in their community before positive flu tests show up at doctors’ offices.
“This can serve as an indicator to remind people to get vaccinated, and alert health care providers and hospitals that they will soon see more cases of influenza virus in patients,” said Michael Pentella, the lab’s director.
Lab staff test weekly samples of wastewater from communities around the state, reporting results by geographic area. Since Dec. 4, the biggest jumps in influenza B have happened in South-Central and Southwest Iowa, while Northwest Iowa saw a spread of influenza A in the second half of January.
The Hygienic Lab started testing the University of Iowa campus wastewater for COVID-19 in early 2021. The idea was to detect clusters of infection without having to do swab tests, which, at that stage, often took hours or days to process.
The lab then got help from the National Institutes of Health Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics initiative and Ceres Nanosciences, a company that makes testing products, to expand services. In October, the lab was serving 27 Iowa counties which together have about 35 percent of the state’s population.
Using the same instruments, lab staff last spring started developing a test for the flu virus in wastewater. The same sites tested for COVID-19 are tested for the flu virus, Pentella said.
“Since this is a quantitative assay that measures virus particles precisely and accurately, it took time to make sure that the test was performing the way that it is expected to,” he said. “We worked with known quantities of the virus and then adjusted the procedure to make certain that we are detecting what we know should be in the sample.”
The lab’s results are anonymous and can’t be traced to any person or household. Lab staff also have agreed to not disclose the communities providing wastewater samples.
Cedar Rapids, has been testing for COVID-19 in sewage since 2021, is one of the communities that submits weekly samples to the State Hygienic Lab, city officials confirmed Friday.
State Hygienic Lab staff now are working on a wastwater test for RSV, a respiratory virus that can be dangerous to infants and older adults.
Cases of RSV have been on the rise in Iowa in recent months. The percentage of lab tests coming back positive for RSV in Iowa increased from 13.8 percent at the end of 2023 to 14.6 percent by the first week of 2024. There now is a vaccine for high-risk groups.
“RSV has been even more difficult to pass the rigorous validation process, but we continue to work on it,” Pentella said of the testing.
Ceres Nanosciences announced in October the Iowa lab is one of five new wastewater-based epidemiology centers of excellence in the nation. Other new sites include the Houston Health Department, Morgan State University in Maryland, the Nebraska Public Health Laboratory and the University of Missouri.
In total, 21 sites across the United States have the designation.
Comments: (319) 339-3157; erin.jordan@thegazette.com
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