MARKERS point to COVID-19 still being strongly present in the Ballarat community while officially recorded case numbers for the city are misleadingly low.
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Wastewater monitoring continues across the state and plays an increasingly critical role in bigger picture COVID-19 screening, Deakin University epidemiology led Catherine Bennett says.
Ballarat chalked up 206 new active COVID-19 cases in the seven days to Friday which, amid a widespread reduction in infections, Professor Bennett said was likely only about one-fifth of what might be truly circulating.
Professor Bennett estimated in January the state's COVID-19 testing was only picking up 40 per cent of COVID-19 cases due to serious under-reporting that has waned even further with easing restrictions and now the abandonment of self-isolation rules.
This is on trend across the globe with The Atlantic reporting true infections in New York could be as much as 20 times higher than case numbers suggest as the United States prepares for winter. Health experts were instead turning to "next generation" COVID-19 tracking in a bid to better predict what was coming because "everyone...contributes data".
Wastewater screening for COVID-19 came to the fore in regional Victoria a year ago, still facing the Delta strain and with an Omicron wave on the horizon. Grampians Public Health Unit could look to fragment detections for potential exposures and in targeting testing messages.
Professor Bennett said this method was not precise but a "way of keeping tabs" on the virus' spread.
COVID-19 fragments in the Ballarat South wastewater, which takes in most of the city, remained consistently strong last month.
While most people might not seem as concerned about infections anymore, Professor Bennett warned about the largely unknown effects long and the newly-termed medium-COVID might bring, particularly for vulnerable peoples and those who might not realise they had underlying risks.
"There are delays [with wastewater monitoring]. Some people can still be shedding the virus and some remnant may still be long-term shedding," Professor Bennett said. "It's not precise but it can signal stronger and weaker detections and will help a transition to a more sustainable testing system."
Professor Bennett said wastewater was an important part of screening along with laboratory data, hospitalisation data and what general practitioners might be seeing. She said home testing, via rapid antigen tests, still had a role and so too, did hospitalisation data in states like Victoria and NSW that had experience with waves.
At the same time, Professor Bennett said it would be interesting to see how this evolved.
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