Ottawa Public Health (OPH) is receiving new metric to help measure levels of COVID-19 in the community: wastewater.

The National Capital Region is one of the first communities in Canada to conduct daily wastewater readings to help inform its community response in the fight against COVID-19, thanks to innovative research from the CHEO Research Institute (CHEO RI) and the University of Ottawa (uOttawa).

Tracking the number of daily positive cases of COVID-19 is one option to gauge the level of COVID activity in the community. However, since not everyone who has COVID-19 is tested, those numbers may not provide an accurate reading of the whole COVID-19 picture in the population. Furthermore, testing can be a lengthy process and results may take several days to become available.

A promising new public health metric provides early