CDC uses Ottawa wastewater to track COVID-19 transmission

Ottawa is the lone La Salle County city that has samples of its wastewater routinely checked by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for COVID-19 transmission.

The process is not one the city handles directly, said City Engineer Tom Duttlinger. The CDC gets its sample and records its data on its website covd.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker.

The CDC has a metric that shows SARS-CoV-2 levels in wastewater and whether the levels are higher or lower than they’ve been. A 0% indicates levels are the lowest they have been at the site, and 100% means levels are the highest they’ve been at the site.

From there, public health officials watch for increasing levels of the virus in wastewater over time and use that data to make public health decisions.

The level SARS-CoV-2 in Ottawa reads in the 60% to 79% category, trending upward in line with the current upswing in COVID-19 cases happening around the county. According to the CDC’s explanation, the 60% to 79% category means levels of SARS-CoV-2 in the water are higher than the average, but not at the highest level.

The CDC started monitoring Ottawa’s wastewater in March.

Bureau County, which has been participating since February, is at it’s highest levels of SARS-CoV-2 in its water, however, this program was only started in December 2021.