blogcutter

Some people read tea-leaves, the stuff that you don't consume. Others prefer to read the stuff that's already passed through your digestive system. And apparently sewage has the potential to warn us that COVID-19 is in our community, several days before an outbreak is detected.

Wastewater analysis has long been used in numerous countries around the world to detect infectious diseases circulating in a particular community. But I guess the newer the virus, the more challenging it is to devise an appropriate screening tool. For the novel coronavirus, surveillance has until now been focused on identifying levels of RNA associated with it. But the RNA is apparently quite fragile.

So now a team of researchers, including Dr. Alex MacKenzie of CHEO and uOttawa engineering professor Robert Delatolla is refining a screening tool that identifies proteins, which are more stable and slower to break down than RNA. Here's the article I read recently:

https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/finding-covid-19-answers-in-sewage

While their work has not yet gone through all the stages of peer review and publication, it does look promising.