Data shows COVID-19 levels overall declining in wastewater across the northeast

A researcher who studies COVID-19 levels in wastewater in this region said for the most part, the amount of the virus in wastewater is going down.

Last month, Ontario's Science Advisory Table showed COVID-19 levels in wastewater data were steadily declining in all regions, with the exception of northern Ontario.

Dr. Peter Juni, the scientific director of Ontario's Science Advisory Table, said at the time that he wasn't sure why case counts were staying high in parts of northern Ontario.

"What certainly contributes is you came relatively late in the Omicon wave and had initially not much going on," he said in February.

"When I look at the curve you see that your curve starts to rise later than other parts of the province."

In Sudbury, Gustavo Ybazeta is a researcher with the Health Sciences North Research Institute.

He said generally across the northeast, the level of virus in wastewater is going down.

"But there are a couple of municipalities that are going up," he said.

"Kapuskasing is one of them, it's essentially going up. And then the other one is Sault Ste. Marie, it seems to be going up too."

Ybazeta said they're also keeping a close eye on data from North Bay.

"It's just one point at this moment when it went up. We're going to continue evaluating this week to see what is the trend. Because we need to have more than one point to establish the print and I think with North Bay, maybe it's going up, but we'd like to have more data."

He said researchers are waiting for more samples, adding many things can impact testing including precipitationlevels.

"We try to have three measurements, independent measures in three different ways," he said.

"And with that, we are going to establish it, you know, as close as possible."

Currently, the Porcupine Health Unit is reporting seven cases in the Kapuskasing area.

"Due to changes in the availability of testing driven by increasing COVID-19 cases related to the Omicron variant, case counts in our current data reports are an understatement of the true numbers of individuals with COVID-19," the health unit stated on Facebook.

"As such, data should be interpreted with caution."