What You Should Know
- Healthcare data intelligence leader Verily Health Inc. has been awarded a multi-year contract renewal by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to continue operating and expanding the National Wastewater Surveillance System (NWSS).
- Builds on a four-year operational foundation: the contract extension expands the public health surveillance partnership Verily has maintained with the CDC since 2023.
- Delivered through Verily Sightline, the company’s specialized public health platform that unifies wastewater epidemiology, high-throughput molecular laboratory testing, bioinformatic data analytics, and software infrastructure to monitor population-level infectious disease transmission trends.
- Introduces advanced genomic capabilities: the expanded CDC program will support continuous pathogen detection, targeted viral and bacterial genomic sequencing, and the incorporation of potential metagenomic surveillance capabilities to detect novel and emerging pathogens before they appear in clinical settings.
Core Program Architecture: Verily Sightline & Expanded Metagenomics
Under the renewed CDC mandate, Verily combines physical laboratory pipelines with population-level health informatics to track infectious disease dynamics:
- End-to-End Operational Pipeline: Verily Sightline integrates sample intake from municipal wastewater treatment facilities, high-throughput biospecimen processing, quantitative PCR assays, and automated cloud data pipelines that feed actionable epidemiological intelligence directly into CDC reporting dashboards.
- Pathogen-Specific Assays: Continues routine monitoring for established respiratory and gastrointestinal pathogens, including SARS-CoV-2, Influenza A/B, and Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV), alongside flexible surge testing for emerging zoonotic threats such as avian influenza (H5N1).
- Genomic Sequencing & Variant Tracking: Performs high-density genomic sequencing to track lineage mutations, detect novel viral variants, and monitor antimicrobial resistance (AMR) markers before they appear in clinical hospital isolates.
- Metagenomic Surveillance Expansion: Integrates prospective metagenomic next-generation sequencing (mNGS) capabilities. Metagenomic testing analyzes total genetic material in a wastewater sample without requiring pre-designed targeted primers, equipping public health officials with an unbiased discovery tool to identify previously uncharacterized or novel biological threats.
“We’re proud to continue our work with the CDC on a program that strengthens national public health surveillance,” said Stephen Gillett, Chairman and CEO of Verily Health. “At Verily Health, we are building the data foundation for the future of healthcare intelligence, bringing together complex health data, scientific expertise, and advanced analytics to generate actionable insights that accelerate research and improve healthcare.”
