San Diego County’s public health lab announced that it has begun publishing the results of in-house wastewater testing for diseases on an online public dashboard.
Samples are collected from the Point Loma Wastewater Treatment Plant, South Bay Water Reclamation Plant and the Encina Wastewater Authority.
On the dashboard released Wednesday through the county’s website, there’s a summary chart that breaks down whether a virus is circulating in the community at a high level and if it’s increasing or deceasing.
The county also provides the charts that these summaries are based upon. In these, the county is testing for viral levels, which, according to public health officials, is helpful in understanding a disease’s spread.
Officials with the county said that the dashboard numbers are difficult to definitively translate into numbers of cases, but are meant to help the public see trends.
Moreover, the charts, with historical data provided by the California Department of Public Health, put these trends and levels in perspective through color-coding, showing what percentile a certain viral level falls under.
For instance, the higher the percentile, the less frequently county officials have seen a certain concentration of a disease in that area’s wastewater. In the county’s dashboard, historically high concentrations land in the red zone — or the 90th percentile.
In the past few months, at each plant, Influenza A has been detected at the highest level as compared to Influenza B, SARS-CoV-2 — better known as COVID-19— and RSV. These are the diseases for which the county is specifically testing.
The trend of Encina Wastewater Authority’s concentration of Influenza A in wastewater (Screenshot from the county dashboard)Since early December, levels of the flu variant have begun to climb. Most notably, at the Encina treatment plant, since the beginning of October, when levels were near zero, to the most recent data provided Dec. 27, virality levels have spiked to around 40 points, landing in the highest percentile.
Point Loma’s plant is the only facility that has historical Influenza A data, from the state, available on the dashboard. Compared to 2024 levels, which reached a high of nearly 82 points toward the end of December, this year’s rates are lower.
However, after the 2024 high, viral activity levels had a steep drop. The most recent detected level of 15.28 — which lands in the 60th percentile — seems to be the beginning of an upward trend, rather than the end of a spike.
These datasets will be updated biweekly, according to the county’s website.
This type of testing began regionally during the coronavirus pandemic with SEARCH (San Diego Epidemiology and Research for COVID Health), a county-supported partnership with Scripps Research and UC San Diego.
Federal funding for SEARCH ended in December, but with the May 2025 opening of the county’s Public Health Lab, specialists began the training and equipment certification necessary for wastewater testing, according to a county statement.
“Bringing wastewater testing in-house with our new lab is just one example of the county’s expanded ability to protect the public’s health and act quickly to confront emerging disease outbreaks,” said Dr. Sayone Thihalolipavan, county public health officer.
According to the county, wastewater data provides “non-invasive and anonymous information about the health of our community, including for those who are sick but may not yet have any symptoms.”
Paired with other data, officials can make decisions about when and where to use public health tools, health messaging and recommendations for the public, and alerting local health partners.
City News Service contributed to this report.
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