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Could wastewater surveillance help track SARS-COV-2 community outbreaks?
Since it was first detected in Wuhan, China, in December 2019, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the causative pathogen of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), has infected over 73.37 million people and taken the lives of over 1.63 million worldwide.
As 2020 draws to a close, various national regulatory bodies have given the go-ahead on the innovative new mRNA vaccine candidate developed by Pfizer and BioNTech – including the UK, Canada and the USA. In the UK, targeted vaccinations are already being administered to the elderly, the immunocompromised and frontline healthcare workers.
While these are promising signs, the crisis is far from over. The complex logistics, financials and compliance-based issues of promoting herd immunity by vaccination at the national, not least global, level are yet to be fully ironed out.
It could be a crucial step toward an informed public health response to diseases like COVID-19.
Testing wastewater a robust source of COVID-19 as those infected shed the virus in their stool could be used for more responsive tracking and supplementing information public health officials rely on when evaluating efforts to contain the virus, such as enhanced public health measures and even vaccines when they become available.
The test identifies and measures genetic material in the form of RNA from SARS-COV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.
“This work confirms that trends in concentrations of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in wastewater tracks with trends of new COVID-19 infections in the community. Wastewater data complements the data from clinical testing and may provide additional insight into COVID-19 infections within communities,” says Alexandria Boehm, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University and co-senior author of the research in
According to a new study, published this week in the journal iScience, at least two species of comb jellies are capable of synthesizing their own coelenterazine, an essential bioluminescent compound.