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There’s still a lot of the COVID-19 virus around, according to the latest University of Saskatchewan “COVID Early Indicators” results.
Samples are taken each week from wastewater in Saskatoon, Prince Albert and North Battleford that measure the amount of virus load per 100 millilitres.
The Saskatoon samples up to last Wednesday showed a 5.4 per cent increase over the previous week — the third increase in the last three weeks. Prince Albert had a 7.5 per cent increase.
North Battleford’s results showed a 34.4 per cent decrease in the amount of COVID virus in the wastewater.
Dr. Markus Brinkmann, a toxicologist and assistant professor at the University of Saskatchewan, said while the increase in Saskatoon isn’t drastic, Omicron isn’t going away as fast as it has in other countries.
“We have certainly expected the Omicron wave to come down a little bit faster and that hasn’t happened yet, so we’re still at pretty high levels in the wastewater,” he said.
His team now has the ability to measure not only for the Omicron BA.1 sublineage, but also for the new BA.2 variant.
“That is showing up in the province as well now. So we do see the percentage of that sublineage increase in the wastewater readings quite significantly,” he said. “BA.2 seems to be more virulent than the first sublineage. That means it will spread faster in the population … and that means we expect it to displace and take over from BA.1 here.”
The latest testing results up to Wednesday show that BA.1 accounts for 85.9 per cent of the COVID variant in wastewater in Saskatoon, with BA.2 making up 13.6 per cent. Just half of one per cent of the wastewater showed another type of COVID variant.
BA.2 now accounts for 70 per cent of the virus in the wastewater in both North Battleford and Prince Albert.
“What we’ve been seeing across the globe is that with Omicron being so transmissible, that the increases in the Omicron wave have been quite rapid. Then in many places around the world, this wave has come down as well as fast as it went up. And that has not happened here,” Brinkmann said.
COVID-19 wastewater information is posted every Monday afternoon here. Brinkmann said the information has been shared with the Saskatchewan Health Authority.