Communicating Sewage 

Surveillance Data for a 

Public Health Response

Sandra McLellan

Professor, School of Freshwater Sciences

University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Communicating Sewage Surveillance (CoSeS)

Interactive group of researchers working with public health and communication 

scholars to build capacity and communication networks for sewage surveillance

- Funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation 

Sandra McLellan, UW-Milwaukee 

Andrea Silverman, New York University

Alexandria Boehm, Stanford

Kyle Bibby, Notre Dame

Dominique Brossard, UW-Madison
Researchers

Francis de los Reyes, North Carolina State 

University

Erin Lipp, University of Georgia

Daniel Gerrity, Southern Nevada Water 

Authority

Rachel Noble, University of North Carolina

John Griffith, Southern California Coastal Water 

Project

Patricia Holden, University of California, Santa 

Barbara

Public health and wastewater

California Association of Sanitation Agencies

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

County of Santa Clara Department of 

Environmental Health

New York City Department of Environmental 

Protection

Utah Department of Health

Wisconsin Department of Health Services

Goal – build capacity and communication networks 

Experts Panel
Researchers Panel: Methods and study design

Controls: Many!

Whole process bovine corona virus (BCoV), Extraction: pepper mild 

mottle virus (PMMoV) Inhibition: BRSV, Assay controls: N1N2 rRNA 

standards, human microbiome member HF183, CrAssphage

Researchers since early March 2020 to 

compare findings

• There was no standard method; diverse 

approaches have led to faster discovery

• Good QC is the key
Researchers Panel: Methods and study design

Researchers have meet since early March 2020 

to compare findings

• Study design should fit question

• Involve public health and wastewater 

sector from the beginning
Full Experts panel: What does public health 

need?

• Convened discussions between researchers 

and public health/wastewater experts 

• Discussed uses, challenges, barriers for 

using SARS-CoV-2 wastewater data

Public Health Focus groups November 2020

Invited state, regional, local public health

• discuss how they are using wastewater data 

• create a two-way conversation and capture 

broad themes 
Barrier 1. As a new data source, most public health agencies 

are not yet comfortable interpreting wastewater data.

• Personnel and resources are stretched well past capacity 

• Unfamiliar units of measure: case counts or hospitalizations have a 

relationship to disease in the community, wastewater surveillance data are 

presented as concentrations of SARS-CoV-2 gene copies per volume of wastewater

• Sources of uncertainty and variability are not well characterized

• Lack of methodological standardization
Barrier 2. Public health agencies want to see SARS-CoV-2 

wastewater data in their own communities to gain confidence 

in its application and utility.

• Growing examples in many areas

• Proof of concept needed

Wisconsin

Utah
Broad insights

Experts Panel

Public health insights

Data is not self-standing

Data needs to be 

simplified and easy to use

Explanations on variability

Timely 

https://www.covid19wbec.org/
https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/202104.0167/v2
Variants are evolving:

How do we communicate sequencing and variant detection? 

nextstrain.org
Acknowledgments

Funding

Alfred P. Sloan Foundation

Sloan Project Co-Principal Investigators

Andrea Silverman, New York University

Alexandria Boehm, Stanford

Kyle Bibby, Notre Dame

Dominique Brossard, UW-Madison

Research and public health Experts Panel

Public health focus group participants

Questions?

Project website

sites/uwm.edu/coses