Introduction

General information about the program, the dashboard and methodology.

The Wastewater Monitoring Program:

The Houston Health Department led a coalition of city and academic partners to develop the SARS-CoV-2 wastewater monitoring program for the city. The City of Houston acknowledges and is grateful for the scientific leadership and dedication from our academic partners, namely the Stadler Lab, Ensor Lab, and Spatial Studies Lab at Rice University, the Taylor Lab at Baylor College of Medicine, and Houston Water to bring this system on board. The current day-to-day operations of the wastewater monitoring system for the City of Houston is maintained by the Houston Health Department, Houston Water, and the labs at Rice University. For more information on the program, visit our website: https://hou-wastewater-epi.org/

The Houston Health Department and its collaborators study samples of wastewater collected from wastewater treatment plants across the city to understand the prevalence of COVID-19 in our community. Individuals infected with COVID-19 shed viral particles in their feces. By testing the wastewater, we can measure the amount of SARS-CoV-2 viral fragments in a community-wide sample and see whether levels of the virus in that community are increasing, decreasing, or staying the same.

The Wastewater Monitoring Dashboard:

This interactive dashboard shows the weekly results from the wastewater monitoring program. Wastewater treatment plant areas are color-coded by the level of viral load in the wastewater sample and are labeled with arrow symbols to represent the trend of the viral load levels. The bottom of the dashboard expands to display plots of the viral load levels against the positivity rate for the wastewater treatment plant.