EU-WISH

The general objective of EU-WISH (Wastewater Integrated Surveillance for Public Health) is to support the participating countries to enhance, extend and consolidate wastewater surveillance for public health. 

Wastewater surveillance and related epidemiological assessment has been used during the COVID-19 pandemic as a tool to ensure timely and relevant intelligence gathering, yielding actionable, complementary data. Joint activities have proven useful in this, and EU-WISH will build on and extend those activities. Regular surveillance of wastewaters in combination with other indicators for the management of the COVID-19 pandemic has facilitated decision making and it is especially important in low-testing periods. As a consequence, wastewater surveillance has been included more systematically in the national surveillance strategies for the prevention and control of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the level of maturity of the detection of the SARS-CoV-2 and its variants in wastewater varies among Member States.

The focus of EU-WISH is to support activities to enhance and improve national public health wastewater surveillance capacities by strengthening knowledge exchange and sharing best practices based on scientific evidence. The activities of this joint action will target and bring together relevant structures at national level and will facilitate the integration and complementarity of wastewater surveillance with other surveillance systems with a public health perspective to strengthen preparedness and response to cross border health threats. EU-WISH is a strong consortium that can contribute to a vision and activities for wastewater surveillance at not only European, but also global level.