Wastewater concentration of coronavirus within Wausau watershed ‘very high’

Damakant Jayshi

First the good news.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention COVID-19 data tracker, three important metrics related to the disease are trending downward nationwide.

The tracker shows emergency department visits due to COVID-19 are down by 11.7%, hospital admissions are down by more 3% and positive tests are down by more than 1%.

The concerning news is that COVID-19 deaths in the most recent week of data collection shows an upward trend of more than 8%. Per CDC data, more than 1.14 million people have died since the global pandemic started claiming lives in early 2020.

In Marathon County, five people died of COVID-19 since April 1, according to Health Department officials. During the same six-month period, there have been 66 hospitalizations due to coronavirus infections, as reported by the department’s Health Officer, Laura Scudiere, to Wausau Pilot & Review. The hospitalization rate in the county, according to the Wisconsin Department of Health Services, is considered “medium.”

But the concentration of SAR-CoV-2, the virus that causes the COVID-19 disease, in the Wausau watershed is “very high.” A watershed is an area of land where raw sewage from homes and businesses flows through a series of sewer pipes into a single downstream point, where it enters a wastewater treatment facility. According to the Wis. Dept. of Health Services, theWausau Wastewater Treatment Facility serves about 42,000 people.

The state health department says one advantage of wastewater monitoring is that it helps in the early detection of the disease because people with COVID-19 have the virus in their feces soon after the infection, often days before they show symptoms or find out about it through testing.

“Wastewater testing is an important tool for tracking levels of COVID-19 in a community,” Scudiere said. “People living in the Wausau area can use the information to determine the steps they may want to take to avoid COVID-19, particularly at times of high transmission.” She added that Wausau participates in wastewater testing for a variety of diseases by analyzing wastewater.

Her suggestion to county residents is to monitor the situation in their community and consult their healthcare providers to make the best decision for themselves and their families.

CDC has recommended that everyone 5 and older should get one updated COVID-19 vaccine, at least two months after getting the last dose of any of these three COVID-19 vaccines: Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna or Novavax.

Despite the proven relative safety of these vaccines, conspiracy theories abound.

People who spread the misinformation and disinformation, knowingly or unknowingly, sometimes cite The Epoch Times as a source, a far-right newspaper that “echoes anti-vaccine messages.” The newspaper, associated with the Falun Gong religious movement, is also known to push QAnon conspiracy theories and “false election claims” about the 2020 U.S. presidential election.

One of the other prominent sources is The Gateway Pundit, which NewsGuard describes as a “far-right political website that publishes false and misleading content. The Gateway Pundit regularly distorts information and occasionally spreads conspiracy theories.”

Then, there are the “disinformation dozen,” the people who have been known to push vaccine-related hoaxes. They are anti-vaccine activists, alternative health entrepreneurs and physicians. Some of them promote “natural health” remedies along with their own supplements and books. Bogus and baseless claims about the vaccine continue to surface online, according to this FactCheck story.

CDC has repeatedly said COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective and serious side effects are rare. These vaccines have saved millions of lives worldwide.

Commonwealth Fund: Vaccines prevented more than 3M additional deaths, 18M hospitalizations in U.S.

The administration of vaccines has prevented more than 3.2 million additional deaths and 18.5 million additional hospitalizations, national health officials say.

“Without vaccination, there would have been nearly 120 million more COVID-19 infections,” notes the 2022 finding from the Commonwealth Fund.

In the United States, nearly 985 million vaccines have been distributed and over 676 millions of doses have been administered, according to CDC data. More than 81% of the U.S. population, or over 270 million, have taken at least one dose of the vaccine, CDC statistics showed. 

The unconscionable and tragic aspect of the issue is that millions of the Covid-related deaths were preventable.

Of the nearly one million people who died of COVID-19 in the U.S., “a huge share of them didn’t have to,” NPR reported, referring to data from the Brown University School of Public Health’s Vaccine Preventable Deaths Dashboard.

The dashboard shows preventable deaths in each state had the people opted to take the available vaccines. In Wisconsin, of the 9,154 people who died due to Covid, deaths of 5,445 people were preventable.

COVID-19 vaccine pioneers awarded Nobel Prize

Earlier this week, the prestigious Nobel Prize in medicine went to two scientists for their consequential discoveries that led to the creation of COVID-19 vaccines that has saved tens of millions of lives in the U.S. and across the world.

Biochemist Katalin Karikó and immunologist American Drew Weissman were awarded the prize for their contribution to “the unprecedented rate of vaccine development during one of the greatest threats to human health,” the Nobel Prize committee in Sweden said in a statement on Oct. 2.

The committee said altogether 13 billion COVID-19 vaccines – made through mRNA and other methodologies – have been administered throughout the world against the global pandemic, saving millions of lives and allowing communities to return to normal conditions.