Toronto working on wastewater surveillance program to watch for disease during FIFA World Cup

Toronto Public Health is developing a wastewater surveillance program to detect any potential spread of diseases during the FIFA World Cup.

Toronto's new Medical Officer of Health Dr. Michelle Murti said the pilot will collect sewage samples in areas where fans congregate and test them for infections such as COVID-19, influenza and RSV.

Murti said the public health unit is looking into whether other illnesses, such as measles, could also be monitored in wastewater given the large international audience expected next summer.

"It'll just be one more piece of information that we have as part of a larger suite of information that we're looking at to make sure that we're keeping people safe and healthy through the games," Murti said.

The city has said it expects 300,000 out-of-town visitors in Toronto over the course of six World Cup matches starting in June.

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Ontario's COVID-19 wastewater surveillance program, which provided a close to real-time way to track the prevalence of the virus before people showed symptoms during the pandemic, ended last year.

Dr. Fahad Razak, an internal medicine specialist at St. Michael's Hospital, said applying this technology to a large scale event like the World Cup is an innovative approach to fill the gap left since the provincial program concluded.

Razak said that program should have been sustained and the disease detection potential of the technology should have been explored beyond COVID-19.

For example, Windsor-Essex County used wastewater surveillance earlier this year to detect a rise in measles infections within the region.

"Measles is a very good example because it is an illness that is so transmissible. If you have a high pocket of