Toronto Public Health is developing a wastewater surveillance program to detect the 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 to detect diseases, 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 that will be congregating in Toronto 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.
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.
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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 unprotected people and you have the emergence of the measles signal within that area, that’s an area where you’d want to do your best from a public health perspective to try and prevent spread,” Razak said.
Razak said wastewater could also be used for opioid surveillance to detect a contaminated drug supply during the World Cup.
“The idea here is – can you use it to make decisions and to intervene in a way that saves people’s lives or reduces illness? That’s the critical question.”
Dr. Lawrence Goodridge, co-lead of the Guelph Wastewater Epidemiology Lab for Public Health, said the province’s decision to end its wastewater program, which monitored 75 per cent of the population, has necessitated smaller scale programs like this one.
The pilot will be useful if a major outbreak spreads at the games, but the drawback is that the reach is limited, he said.
“People are going to be moving around, they’re coming into Toronto, but they’re also going to be moving around through the province for the World Cup,” Goodridge said.
Toronto’s top doctor said the pilot will help determine the value of wastewater surveillance for future large-scale events in the city.
© 2025 The Canadian Press
