Wastewater Surveillance for Covid-19 | 21 Jul 2022
Why in News?
Recently, a study has been carried out in Hyderabad and Bengaluru to check waste-water based surveillance for Covid-19 as an efficient and foolproof way of collecting information about the virus.
What do we need to know about the Study?
- The aim of this study was to develop a protocol and standard operating procedures for doing this, which the researchers hope to hand over to the industry, who can then act as service providers.
- The study in Hyderabad was carried out for a period of about a year and obtained data on a population size of about 2.5 lakh.
- The researchers were able to spot the temporal dynamics in the viral load in drainage water, which was consistently high from July to November 2020.
- A slight increase in February 2021 hinted at the second wave which set on in March 2021.
- Samples were collected from Drain:
- After observation, the researchers found that most of the virus comes from faecal samples.
- The group has also studied wastewater samples in Bengaluru.
- They sampled the water from 28 Sewage Treatment Plants (STPs) dotted across the city.
- In an STP, the water is collected throughout the day, treated and let out again. So it has to be sampled before treatment.
- They sampled the water from 28 Sewage Treatment Plants (STPs) dotted across the city.
What are the Advantages of Wastewater Surveillance?
- Trends of increasing or decreasing viral load can be gauged well before the waves take off.
- In RT-PCR on a single person’s sample (where the test result can come quickly), it takes a couple of weeks to do the sequence analysis of the sample.
- In wastewater surveillance, you are sequencing thousands of individuals’ virus contributions.
- New variants can be spotted in advance, as can different viruses, such as those that cause Dengue, Zika, or TB.
- This would help the health department to be prepared to deal with epidemics.
- Studies can monitor antimicrobial resistance genes and point out to civic authorities as to which antibiotics are failing.
- This would help the health department to be prepared to deal with epidemics.
- Unlike other types of Covid-19 surveillance, wastewater surveillance does not depend on people having access to healthcare, people seeking healthcare when sick, or availability of Covid-19 testing.