North Carolina is testing community wastewater for monkeypox. But will it be detected?
North Carolina labs have started testing wastewater for monkeypox, the latest infectious disease on the rise in the state.
After two weeks, the virus had not been detected in water collected at 25 locations statewide as of Monday, said Kelly Haight Connor, a spokesperson for the state Department of Health and Human Services.
It’s not clear how much of the virus must be present to be detected. “It is unknown how many cases are needed in an area before detection is possible in wastewater,” Connor said.
North Carolina has been testing wastewater for the virus that causes COVID-19 since 2020. Those efforts have shown that finding traces of a virus through sampling what’s flushed from homes and businesses can sometimes turn up information that is not easily available from other sources.
Tests have confirmed nearly 3 million cases of coronavirus infection in North Carolina since 2020. Wastewater testing has allowed state health officials to monitor various strains of the virus and estimate the scale of infection in communities. Wastewater is a useful tool for tracking infection levels because people with and without COVID-19 symptoms shed the virus, according to the DHHS website.
North Carolina started the monkeypox wastewater surveillance within the last two weeks and will continue throughout the coming months, Connor said.
Wastewater testing has successfully detected monkeypox in California. Stanford University’s Sewer Coronavirus Alert Network detected the monkeypox virus in 10 of the 11 sewer systems it tests in the Bay Area, the MIT Technology Review reported Saturday.
North Carolina’s testing process involves collecting samples from wastewater facilities and sending them to partner labs around the state. Labs look for the virus of interest and report results to DHHS, according to a fact sheet.
DHHS then forwards results to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the CDC reports state trends back to DHHS.
The University of North Carolina at Charlotte, which manages one of DHHS’ partner labs, is testing protocols that “would be effective in establishing a reliable surveillance system for monkeypox to help inform public health responses,” university spokesperson Buffie Stephens said in an email.
North Carolina had 34 confirmed monkeypox infections as of July 25, according to the state division of public health.
Anyone can get monkeypox via close contact, but most confirmed cases so far have been concentrated in men who have sex with men. As a result, prevention and vaccine outreach has been targeted to those individuals.
The state expanded its vaccine eligibility criteria Monday. Initially, transgender individuals and men who have sex with men that had multiple or anonymous partners in the last 14 days were eligible, in addition to anyone known to have been exposed to someone with the monkeypox virus within the prior 14 days.
Now, the period for having sexual partners among these groups has been expanded to 90 days. Additionally, anyone diagnosed with a sexually transmitted infection in the past 90 days or anyone taking drugs intended to prevent HIV infection can now get the vaccine.
This story was originally published July 26, 2022 at 6:00 AM with the headline "North Carolina is testing community wastewater for monkeypox. But will it be detected?."
