WARN-ID continues to make significant strides in expanding the capabilities of wastewater-based pathogen surveillance. Recent advancements include:
Josh Levy presenting ww surveillance results
Enhanced Pathogen Tracking: The Freyja platform, developed by WARN-ID, has been refined to incorporate novel statistical and empirical methods. These enhancements facilitate the precise tracking of pathogen lineages across diverse sequencing platforms and analytical approaches. Freyja has emerged as the de facto standard for analyzing wastewater sequencing data, supporting numerous regional and national surveillance programs globally, including the CDC National Wastewater Surveillance System in the United States and the national wastewater monitoring program in South Africa.
Expanded Pathogen Surveillance: The integration of community-level clinical surveillance data with wastewater monitoring has broadened the scope of pathogen surveillance beyond SARS-CoV-2. Freyja now enables the analysis of other significant pathogens, such as monkeypox virus (MPXV), seasonal and avian influenza, and measles.
Faith Oladipo, ACEGID, Nigeria
Integrated Hub for Infectious Disease Surveillance: To establish a comprehensive resource for infectious disease surveillance, WARN-ID researchers have integrated publicly available wastewater sequencing data into the outbreak.info platform. This platform provides both graphical and programmatic access to multi-modal pandemic-scale genomic data, enabling researchers to conduct robust characterizations of pathogen dynamics.
Global Collaboration and Expansion: WARN-ID is actively collaborating with a consortium of wastewater surveillance programs worldwide to demonstrate the efficacy of this integrated approach. In Nigeria, the program has expanded its surveillance efforts beyond pilot studies conducted at the Redeemers’ University campus. Wastewater and environmental samples are now being collected and sequenced in Lagos, providing more comprehensive insights into pathogen circulation within the Nigerian population. This research has also served as a foundation for multiple Master’s thesis projects at Redeemers University, including the work of Precious Adeyemi, who graduated with distinction.
Wastewater sampling in Sierra Leone
Promoting Open Science and Accessibility: To lower the barriers to entry for public health data visualization and dissemination, the WARN-ID team has released a preprint outlining essential data workflows, visualization tools, and dissemination platforms for web-based public health dashboards. This resource includes open-source and modular components, empowering other researchers to develop high-quality data visualizations and make them readily accessible to public health stakeholders and the general public.
These advancements underscore the critical role of wastewater-based epidemiology in public health surveillance and highlight the ongoing commitment of the WARN-ID program to developing innovative and accessible tools for combating infectious diseases.