LONDON – Poop does not lie.
That’s why scientists are searching the sewers underneath the world’s cities and towns for information they hope will help stop the spread of the coronavirus.
Sewers are information treasures, containing genetic material from COVID-19 dumped by those with the virus in their stool, even if they are asymptomatic.
A recent study has also shown that viral levels in sewage correlate with new clinically diagnosed cases of COVID-19 and may reflect the prevalence of the disease before it is reported by doctors, raising hopes that sewage can become an early warning system: a canary in a coal mine-type – for new outbreaks.
In the United Kingdom, a group of researchers launched an epidemiological surveillance program across the country on Thursday, called the N-WESP network, in what will become one of the largest international companies seeking wastewater surveillance for COVID-19 , the disease caused by the coronavirus.
They will try to develop models that correlate the viral RNA, the genetic material of the coronavirus, found in the wastewater with the actual number of cases of COVID-19 in the community that produced that wastewater in the first place.
“Once the science matures, what we hope will be on the order of a few months, we will be helping to provide the methods that will be used to generate the data necessary to inform decisions about the closure,” said Andrew Singer, chief researcher on the project. and senior scientist at the UK Center for Ecology and Hydrology.
The UK suffered the worst COVID-19 outbreak in Europe with more than 43,900 deaths and 313,000 cases, forcing millions of people to shut themselves up.
And British health authorities have been testing thousands of people every day to track the spread of the virus as its economy reopens and blocking restrictions are lifted. However, people with known symptoms or exposure to confirmed cases are generally screened. It is these asymptomatic, symptom-free people, who can still transmit the virus, who are often missed.
That’s where researchers hope that wastewater testing can come in, using genetic material from viruses to conclusively quantify how many people in the population are removing the virus at any given time. While it cannot identify which specific individuals have the virus, it does provide a more immediate snapshot of the epidemiological situation in a community based on its wastewater profile.
It is a potentially low, anonymous and immediate mechanism for predicting local outbreaks, said Barbara Kasprzyk-Hordern, a professor of chemistry at the University of Bath, one of the researchers involved in the project.
“Sewage can be really helpful in understanding where the virus is spreading, even if we don’t necessarily see more people in hospitals, because this happens later and not everyone has symptoms, so we can truly provide a picture comprehensive community-wide infection, “he added.
The team will investigate wastewater in cities in England, Wales and Scotland and look at individual nodes in their wastewater systems that feed different parts of the city. That way, health officials can identify any potential hot spots within that city limits and move with specific restrictions in specific neighborhoods.
“The cost benefit is that if it is caught early, you don’t lose an entire city, and therefore you don’t apply an entire city,” Singer said.
The project will also analyze whether the virus that ends up in sewers could still be infectious, which may have repercussions on the way wastewater is managed.
“One of the few positive things that could come out of COVID-19 is that we recognize that there is data inside our wastewater, and that the data can save lives,” said Singer.
But he said wastewater surveillance could pave the way for more effective tracking of other infectious diseases, not just COVID-19.
“If many countries develop this capacity and support it in the future, what is less likely to happen again is a pandemic that stretches across the world for two months when no one knew what was happening,” he added.
William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, told NBC News that wastewater surveillance for COVID-19 can help focus public health efforts after the pandemic dies in the United States.
“At the other end of the pandemic, as we expect COVID-19 to decrease, you can also document the reduction and then elimination of the virus,” said Schaffner.
“Right now, we have so much COVID-19, I think it would have limited utility in the midst of an expanding epidemic, because we know the virus is everywhere, but as COVID-19 recedes, it would be interesting to detect Hot Spots. “
