Premier Doug Ford’s government is scrapping Ontario’s program for sampling wastewater to monitor the level of COVID-19 in the population.
The program measures how much of the virus that causes COVID-19 is circulating around the province and is run by a dozen universities and research sites, through funding from the Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks.
In a statement, a provincial official said the move will “avoid duplication” with a federal program.
“The federal government conducts wastewater surveillance across Canada and is moving to expand its sampling to additional sites in Ontario,” said Environment Ministry spokesperson Gary Wheeler in an email to CBC News.
“Ontario is working to support this expansion while winding down the provincial wastewater surveillance initiative,” he said.
Public health officials are criticizing the move as short-sighted.
It’s just severely limited in terms of the number of sites being sampled. They are talking about adding a few more sites, but it’s sounding like it’ll still be much less that will cause big gaps in the data.
And to do this at a time where we have new viruses that are cause for concern? Even the US is expanding their waste water testing. It’s incredibly cost efficient to test this way vs testing and processing results from individuals.
Thank you for the explanation.
It sounds like your region is using this excuse as a cost-savings measure then:-(.
But maybe the outcry will be enough to increase the number of sampling sites, or even reinstate the local program? It’s your money after all, so you should get to do with it what you want!:-)