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Whichever way you look at it, there’s good and bad news coming from the University of Saskatchewan’s wastewater research team.
The team released its findings for Saskatoon, North Battleford and Prince Albert on Tuesday afternoon. They showed a slight increase of 15 per cent of COVID-19 viral traces in wastewater for Prince Albert, along with a large 87 per cent plummet for North Battleford.
What about Saskatoon?
Its wastewater showed a slight increase of 10 per cent when looking at the amount of RNA in the wastewater for the week of Aug. 26 to Sept. 2.
Markus Brinkmann is an assistant professor at the university and is a part of the wastewater research team.
“(Saskatoon’s figures) still saw a slight increase … That normally translates to an increase in case numbers in the following week,” he said Tuesday.
“We would still expect a slight increase in case numbers here in Saskatoon. But the last data point that we recorded here shows potentially a sign of a slight decrease here.”
There’s the good news, potentially.
Brinkmann said when it comes to the water being studied, it makes things a bit tricky when it comes to both the vaccinated and unvaccinated populations.
“If you look at the data that the province puts out now, a certain fraction of the fully vaccinated population and also partially vaccinated individuals are still potentially able to become infected with the virus and test positive,” he explained.
“There’s still a slight chance that vaccinated individuals become infected, and they would still be contributing to the virus that we measure in the wastewater.”
He said it’s trickier compared to last year when vaccines were just a hope for the general population.
Another portion of the bad news is all of the viral RNA in Saskatoon’s wastewater is the Delta variant.
“That certainly means that the strain on the health-care system is greater than it would be on the plain old wild-type COVID, as we call it,” Brinkmann said.
When looking at the overall picture of Saskatoon’s COVID situation, there are variations in the amount of the RNA in the wastewater. With the RNA value jumping heavily in weeks past — including by triple and quadruple in the month of September — it’s likely a slowdown is coming, said Brinkmann.
“That’s what we’re hoping for, yes,” he continued. “We’re hopeful that people show the right behaviour in different situations … and getting vaccinated, of course.”