Edwin Oh, Ph.D., Associate Professor at the Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine, right, and undergraduate research assistant Nabih Ghani demonstrate their process for collecting a wastewater sample at UNLV Tuesday, Jan. 11, 2022.
Friday, Aug. 5, 2022 | 2 a.m.
Monkeypox in Las Vegas
Las Vegas’ sewer sleuths, who came to prominence during the pandemic tracking coronavirus through wastewater, are on the trail of another emerging threat: monkeypox.
What they have discovered is cause for caution, not alarm, said Edwin Oh, an associate professor who leads the team from UNLV’s Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine.
Traces of the monkeypox virus have been found in the sewers around the Las Vegas Strip and at the wastewater treatment plant they flow into. The virus has not turned up at 14 other plants the team monitors in Southern Nevada, Oh said.
“Our wastewater surveillance works best to inform citizens that there is this pathogen in the community and we need to take care of it,” Oh said.
Oh said he was not surprised to discover the virus on the Strip, as it is “the international capital of tourism in the world.” People from around the country and the globe travel to Las Vegas, potentially bringing with them whatever illnesses are circulating in their communities back home.
But it’s probably only a matter of time before the monkeypox virus starts showing up in the wastewater in other parts of the valley, Oh said.
The Southern Nevada Health District has reported 24 confirmed or probable cases of monkeypox in Clark County.
Monkeypox symptoms often begin with a fever, headache, muscle aches and swollen lymph nodes, followed by a rash and sores, according to the health district. The rash typically begins on the face and spreads to other parts of the body.
Unlike COVID-19, which spreads mainly through the air, monkeypox spreads primarily through skin-to-skin contact with infectious lesions or by touching fabrics and other objects used by an infected person. It can be passed along by close intimate contact, according to the health district.
UNLV, in conjunction with the health district, the Southern Nevada Water Authority and the Desert Research Institute, established the wastewater surveillance program in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
UNLV researchers, including undergraduate students, remove manhole covers and use long poles with a bottle on the end of it to dip out water samples. Those samples, in turn, are tested for traces of the virus.
Monkeypox cannot be contracted through wastewater, but the university is using the program to detect whether the virus is increasing or decreasing among Southern Nevada’s 2.4 million people, Oh said.
Monkeypox is not as widespread in Las Vegas as in some other places. In San Francisco, the virus has been detected in all but one of the city’s wastewater treatment plants, Oh said.
“We are nowhere near that, which is a good thing,” he said.
Within the past week, California, New York and Illinois have declared states of emergency because ofmonkeypox outbreaks. The New York Times reported Thursday that the Biden administration was planing to declare monkeypox a public health emergency.
“The goal here is to get folks a little bit more informed,” Oh said. “We don’t want another COVID-19 where information was disseminated too late.”
Within the next month, Oh and his team will be updating the surveillance program’s website with more information about the presence of monkeypox in sewers here.
The program cannot determine how many people might have monkeypox, but the data can reveal information that will ultimately help the community’s public health strategies, health officials say.
Last year, the surveillance program detected the omicron variant of the coronavirus a week before Clark County reported its first clinical case Dec. 14. The virus was discovered in a wastewater sample that also came from the Strip.
The surveillance program can look for any number of pathogens as long as they show up in human waste.
The first case of monkeypox in Clark County was reported June 15 after a man in his 20s who had recently traveled domestically came down with the disease, according to the health district.
The man did not require hospitalization and isolated at home, officials said.
The health district received a limited supply of monkeypox vaccine last month for people who have been exposed to the virus, officials said.
The vaccine is only approved for people 18 and older, and those who have already had monkeypox are not eligible to receive it, health officials said.
The health district requested additional doses of the vaccine and planned to expand distribution based on availability.
