Wastewater monitoring can warn of COVID-19 spikes 2 weeks in advance: IIT Ganginagar Study-Edexlive

Monitoring untreated wastewater could warn authorities of a surge or decline in COVID-19 cases up to two weeks in advance, according to a study conducted by scientists at the Indian Institute of Technology Gandhi Nagar.

Researchers, including researchers at the Gujarat Biotechnology Research Center (GBRC), investigated the association between SARS-CoV-2 genetic loading in wastewater and COVID-19 cases at the district level in Gandhinagar and monitored wastewater. I checked if it was possible. An effective tool for early warning about illness.

“This is the first evidence based on weekly monitoring in India to elucidate this early warning function of COVID-19 wastewater monitoring,” Professor Manish Kumar of the IIT-GN Department of Earth Sciences, who led the study, told PTI. Told. ..

“The results are very promising and we plan to share them with the authorities,” Kumar said, and it will take time for the authorities to address wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) as a policy intervention for COVID. Added. 19 Mitigation plan.

Professor Prosun Bhattacharya of the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden said that wastewater monitoring needs to be part of COVID management not only in India but globally in order to tightly control the spread of SARS-CoV-2 infection. I agreed.

“This study, led by the IITGN team, strongly suggests that WBE surveillance needs to be an essential step in a national health surveillance program, especially as an integrated part of COVID-19 pandemic monitoring.” Bhattacharya told PTI.

“This will help water authorities identify city hotspots and provide up to two weeks of lead for improvising smart, demand-driven interventions for COVID-19 management,” he said. Added.

Bhattacharya said wastewater monitoring from domestic flights will also be an important step to be taken to track population mobility, a potential carrier of SARS-CoV-2 against the ultimate disease epidemic.

Kumar also argued that WBE would help monitor the post-deployment efficacy of the vaccine against COVID-19.

“Wastewater monitoring can be conducted to monitor the status of wastewater from major buildings such as Congress, the Secretariat, and the South Block of Delhi, and to compare the situation before and after the anti-COVID-19 vaccine. “He explained.

The study, conducted in collaboration with the Gujarat Contamination Control Board (GPCB), has been published in the preprint repository medRxiv and is under review in the journal Environmental Research.

The study is based on a study conducted by the team in Ahmedabad last May, demonstrating that the team was the first in India to successfully detect the SARS-CoV-2 genetic material in wastewater.

The latest study analyzed 43 samples of SARS-CoV-2 RNA from four wastewater treatment plants from August 7 to September 30 last year.

Inflow or untreated wastewater was initially collected twice a week and then weekly for two months.

In this way, a total of 43 inflow wastewater samples were collected from four plants during this period. Three target genes for SARS-CoV-2 were considered, and the presence of two or all genes in a particular sample was considered “positive” for COVID-19. The researchers said that a total of 40 samples out of 43 were found to be positive, that is, they carry at least two genes for SARS-CoV-2.

Next, a time-based comparison was made between the official documented case of COVID-19 and the rate of change in genomic concentration in the sample.

Professor Ryo Honda, an associate professor at Kanazawa University, who heads the Japan Wastewater Monitoring Task Force, said the study had important implications for the WBE of COVID-19 in India.

“In Japan, even if the number of reported cases is less than 1 in 100,000, the possibility of WBE predicting COVID-19 cases in which SARS-CoV-2 was detected was also clearly understood,” Honda said. I told PTI.

“Athlete village wastewater monitoring has been proposed as one of the key elements of the upcoming Tokyo Olympics 2021 COVID-19 risk management,” added Masaaki Kitajima of Hokkaido University.

According to experts, WBE is a promising approach to understanding disease outbreaks in specific catchments by monitoring viral load in wastewater.

“We first detected the SARS-CoV-2 gene in wastewater and then followed patients before symptoms appeared,” said Notre Dame University, a key member of the global collaboration on WBE for COVID-19. Aaron Bivins said. Said.

The US federal government has announced a contract to monitor wastewater coming from one-third of the US population, “he said. Studies have reported that the new coronavirus is present in the feces of infected individuals. It was found in sewage entering a genetic material (RNA) processing plant from a virus.

Because treatment plants collect wastewater over large areas, measuring RNA levels in untreated wastewater may provide valuable insights into the proportion of infected people in the area, researchers say. Stated. Researchers can use the RT-PCR test to detect new coronaviruses with high sensitivity, Kumar added.