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The collected data could be used to estimate roughly how many people are infected in the catchment area of a wastewater treatment plant.
10:03 a.m., April 22, 2020
With a new method, scientists from Innsbruck and Vienna have fragments of the genome for the first time SARS-CoV-2 corona virus tested on the influx of Austrian sewage treatment plants. They hope this gives them a better overview of the spread of the disease and the course of the pandemic, the researchers emphasized in a broadcast Wednesday.
Researchers at the Agency for Health and Food Safety (AGES), the Innsbruck University of Medicine, the Technical University (TU) Vienna and the University of Innsbruck He joined forces in early April to form the “Coron-A” consortium. Its objective is to discover how the presence of SARS-CoV-2 in domestic wastewater is related to the number of infections in the catchment area of wastewater treatment plants.
The bottom line is that a A significant proportion of those infected, including those with mild or mild symptoms, the virus is excreted through the faeces. Therefore, fragments of the virus genome must be detected in wastewater treatment plants. Therefore, analyzes of wastewater samples could be used to draw conclusions about the spread of infection among the population. In addition to conventional nose and throat swab tests, this would be an additional instrument for meaningful width detection.
The teams around Norbert Kreuzinger of the Institute for Water Quality and Resource Management of the Vienna University of Technology and Heribert Insam The Institute of Microbiology at the University of Innsbruck has successfully detected the genetic material of SARS-CoV-2 in sewage samples from two sewage treatment plants in Tyrol and the Vienna metropolitan area. “We use quantitative PCR tests that not only allow us to detect even the smallest traces of viral RNA, but also draw conclusions about the number of viral particles and, consequently, the extent of the disease,” Insam told APA. Scientists emphasize that only virus fragments are detected and that there is no risk of infection by sewage.
The data collected in this way could be used to estimate approximately how many people in the catchment area of a sewage treatment plant are infected. First, a large data set on the number of people infected in a given catchment area is necessary to establish a relationship with the measured values in the wastewater and make reliable statements, Insam said.
Scientists now want more studies on the Stability of the virus genome in wastewater samples. perform. Furthermore, wastewater samples from all over Austria must be collected and analyzed in different spatial and temporal resolutions to create the basis for epidemiological monitoring of wastewater.
They hope to recognize a regional outbreak of the epidemic at an early stage and thus support health authorities in their decisions on measures. Similar methods for the detection of SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater are already being tested in the Netherlands and the United States.
