Scientist turn their attention to sewage for tracing route of asymptomatic cases of COVID-19

NEW DELHI: While the countries and government are looking for ways to contain the spread of the novel corona virus, which has claimed more than two hundred thousands lives, and put countries at a stop, a group of scientist have turned their attention to sewage system to flush out hidden cases and measure the spread of the virus within communities by examining sewage.

According to a report published in CNN, the scientists are using wastewater testing which has detected traces of Covid-19 genetic material, also known as RNA, in faecal matter.

Matt Meyer, New Castle County Executive said that the data gathered from wastewater will be helpful in finding how many people have been infected with the virus asymptomatically and are now transmitting it to others.

Matt also said, they have tied up with an MIT-based start-up, ‘Bigot’ to test wastewater for the virus.

“We want to identify hotspots, run this at 10 treatment facilities across a county of 560,000 people, and find out with these hotspots where they are and where they’re not,” he added.

According to a report published earlier, Dutch scientists had earlier traced the virus in wastewater before the cases were reported.

The novel coronavirus is often excreted in an infected person’s stool. Although it has not been made clear that the wastewater system will become an important route of transmission of the pathogen. The scientist had also detected traces of novel coronavirus at a wastewater treatment plant in Amersfoort in the Netherlands on March 5, before any cases were detected in the city. Though, Netherlands registered its first case of coronavirus on February 27.

Prof. Gertjan Medema, Principal Microbiologist at KWR Watercycle Research Institute said, “It is important to collect information about the occurrence and fate of this new virus in sewage to understand if there is no risk to sewage workers, but also to determine if sewage surveillance could be used to monitor the circulation of SARS-CoV-2 in our communities”.