HHS seeks method to collect and analyze wastewater as part of federal effort to fight COVID-19 pandemic

The Department of Health and Human Services is seeking technology to assist the agency in collecting and analyzing wastewater as part of the agency’s effort to fight the COVID-19 pandemic, HHS officials announced.

HHS’s Office of the Chief Information Officer is managing the project. The data will be transferred into HHS Protect, the HHS COVID-19 Data Sharing Platform that ingests, integrates, manages, and analyzes HHS data sets, publicly available data sets, state and local data sets, and private sector data sets. HHS Protect provides a comprehensive view of all pertinent information in near real-time to make data-backed decisions, according to HHS.

“ Data collection and analysis is of the utmost importance in responding to COVID-19 and coordinating efforts to collect that data will accelerate our work to protect the public and lessen the spread and impact of this virus,” the announcement states.

“With the increasing number of cases in the United States and across the globe, it is critical for the United States Government to have access to all available resources to support efforts in the response. This requirement is a critical and urgently need to support the nation’s response to the COVID-19 health emergency. The HHS Protect platform is critical to manage data and information for HHS to the nation, White House task force, and the National Response Coordination Center,” it states.

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