The One Health laboratory at YCEDA began with an urgent, and narrower, focus during the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic. During the height of the pandemic in 2020, Yuma County was considered a national hotspot for disease transmission. This caused a public health crisis for the border community and posed a threat to domestic and international food supply. Yuma County is one of the largest agricultural producers in the United States, but without a healthy workforce due to COVID-19 outbreaks, the industry faced difficulties in maintaining important production as well as significant economic losses.

To combat this problem, local farmer Jesus Tovar of T&P Farms, Inc. and Yuma County generously donated funds that helped the Yuma Center of Excellence for Desert Agriculture (YCEDA) develop a biosafety level 2 wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) laboratory at the Yuma Agricultural Center. With technical assistance from Dr. ”Ian Pepper | WEST Center”, director of the University of Arizona’s Water & Energy Sustainable Technology Center (Home | WEST Center), YCEDA launched weekly wastewater testing – collecting, processing, and analyzing samples throughout the County to detect COVID-19 infection, mitigate the spread of the virus, and avert outbreaks in Yuma communities.

Additional funding from Yuma County and the Arizona Department of Health Services (Arizona Department of Health Services) supported pilot projects to expand the weekly testing and assess WBE as an early-warning tool for identifying high or increasing COVID-19 disease prevalence throughout the County. Funding from the State of Arizona, Office of the Governor, enhanced lab capabilities, enabling YCEDA to incorporate near real-time SARS-CoV-2 variant testing through genome sequencing into ongoing efforts, improving monitoring efforts and allowing for identification of new variants.

Dr. Bradley Schmitz (Dr. Bradley Schmitz joins YCEDA | ALVSCE Compass: Employee Resources), a national expert in organizing and executing WBE programs, joined YCEDA as a visiting researcher in early 2021. He has been instrumental in developing protocols for wastewater testing for SARS-CoV-2 quantification, data modeling, and interpretation. Additionally, a county-wide steering committee was established to guide public health preparedness, response actions, and communication to mitigate disease transmission.

YCEDA’s One Health laboratory has transitioned from its early focus of monitoring solely SARS-CoV-2 to mitigate COVID-19 outbreaks in the early 2020s. Leveraging WBE expertise and connections built during the pandemic, the lab’s purpose has expanded to more comprehensively support health in Yuma County.

By early 2025, over 5,500 wastewater samples had been processed at the YCEDA lab. The data supplied by these efforts have facilitated numerous public health actions, including mask mandates, promotions for vaccinations, and public communications. The framework established in Yuma County is being used as a key case study for successfully implementing WBE on a community-scale, and data is being included in the National Wastewater Surveillance System (NWSS) with the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). 

This program has expanded targets to include Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and Candida auris. The lab also processes mosquito samples to capture virulence detection of West Nile Virus and St Louis Encephalitis. The combination of WBE and mosquito surveillance provides local public health officials, hospitals, governments, academics, and key stakeholders with an early warning to prevent disease transmission and combat healthcare system overload.