Canada's wastewater bird flu tracking is a COVID offshoot without any positive hits yet

According to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and health officials, the latest strain of H5N1 has yet to show up in the country in animals or humans.

This follows a second human case of bird flu in the U.S. the most recent being a farm worker in Michigan who had mild eye symptoms and has since recovered.

The virus has been spreading among more animals since 2020, while the detection in U.S. livestock earlier this year was an unexpected discovery sparking questions about food safety and whether it could impact humans.

Despite the virus not yet tracking in Canada, some scientists are continuing to sample wastewater to try and catch its emergence from the get-go.

Mike McKay is an environmental researcher and scientist with the University of Windsor (UWindsor) who was a part of wastewater surveillance back in 2020 for COVID-19 tracking.

He says what they learned then is being put to use now for other viruses, too.

"We're playing on this idea that wastewater surveillance is a sentinel or an early alert to potential emerging threats that may be circulating," McKay said.

"[It] will allow us to allow decision makers to be alerted early and inform them in terms of where they have to move supply chains."

Wastewater tracking also began thanks to processes and procedures established to follow COVID's spread and helps predict community outbreaks.

McKay says the hope is that bird flu can be captured by the science that's already in place as a general indicator to identify typical flu strains.

"Theoretically, we would detect avian influenza in wastewater in Windsor-Essex or any of the other municipal municipalities we are monitoring using our existing assays."

And as of now, McKay says they've yet to detect anything.

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Windsor Morning6:53Local scientists watch for bird flu in wastewater

As for cases of infected dairy cattle and humans in the U.S., he says it's likely not due to infected people living within the sewer shed or catchment area.

"The hypothesis is that contaminated milk was discharged into those sewer systems and picked up with the wastewater testing."

McKay calls wastewater surveillance an important piece or tool in the toolbox for monitoring highly pathogenic bacteria like avian influenza virus.

'Very low' risk for general population

The medical officer of health for the regionlabels the risk of humans contracting the virus as currently "very low."

Dr. Mehdi Aloosh, representing the Windsor-Essex County Health Unit, is reacting to the latest risk assessment from the Public Health Agency of Canada surrounding the subtype of bird flu for people dealing with cows and poultry.

"Could we change with this risk assessment change in three months? It's possible, but it doesn't seem so at this moment," he said.

Aloosh says the general public should be cautious about handling any live or dead birds, and that if it's unavoidable people should protect themselves with proper masks, gloves and handwashing.

According to Aloosh, wastewater surveillance proved its importance during the pandemic to learn how viruses travel in real time.

"COVID was a great exercise for all of us to learn how to best communicate with each other and the timely communication. I think that in that sense the machine is lubricated. The information is, travelling fast into different layers."