Sewage surveillance spots new covid-19 variants as effectively as PCRs

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Sewage analysis can help identify the arrival of a new variant in a community.

Wastewater samples from around the world have been analysed to find the remnants of the virus in people's faeces.

There was no study looking at how reliable the method was at determining the speed and distance of the virus's spread.

From December 2020 to February 2022, Bergthaler and his colleagues at the Medical University of Vienna took samples of waste water from 9 million Austrians. Austrian policy-makers have been informed of the study's results.

The team compared the waste-water data with the results of a test. The results from the two methods were almost always the same.

The sewage samples show that the more-transmissible omicron variant became dominant in Austria within a few weeks.

Contact tracing involves testing people for covid-19 after they are in close proximity to someone who is likely to be infectious.

Bergthaler says that waste-water surveillance is not subject to sampling bias, does not require an advanced healthcare system and may be more economical than individual tests.

He says waste-water research doesn't find people quickly.

He considers waste water a complement to classical care-based epidemiology.

Bergthaler believes the method could be useful in countries that don't have enough money to conduct extensive contact tracing.

He expects waste water-based epidemiology to become a central tool in the fight against infectious diseases.

In countries with well- connected waste-water networks, waste-water surveillance may only be effective. There is less data available in settings that do not have waste-water systems.

Andrew Singer at the UK Centre for Ecology says that the study shows the feasibility of using waste water as a tool for calculating the dynamics of newronaviruses.

Nature Biotechnology was published in the journal.