Friday, July 3, 2020

Sewage Epidemiology: Viable COVID 19 Early Warning System?


Could a sewage-based coronavirus test provide faster and better results than existing medical tests?

By: Ringo Bones

Current rapid coronavirus antibody tests recently got a bad rap after providing a lot of false-positive results, but could testing a city or community’s sewer system for the COVID 19 virus provide faster and more accurate results? Scientists led by UK’s Centre for Ecology and Hydrology are working on a standardized test to “count” the amount of coronavirus in a wastewater sample. The test could pick up COVID 19 infection spikes up to 10 days earlier than with existing medical based tests. Newcastle University’s Prof. David Graham and his colleagues have now developed a way to quantify the genetic material from the coronavirus.

Early in the COVID 19 pandemic, research revealed that people infected with the virus “shed” viral material in their feces. That insight prompted an interest in “sewage epidemiology”. A somewhat similar test used by Chinese epidemiologists working with Italian health authorities during the spring of 2020 produced test results showing that coronavirus could already had been present in Italy near the end of December 2019. The researchers want to fine tune and reproduce this test before it can be rolled out as part of a COVID 19 alert system.

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