Monkeypox is in Bay Area wastewater

Recent data suggests that the monkeypox can be detected in bodily fluids from those who have been bitten. The monkeypox virus can be registered in wastewater if a flushed tissue from a person with the disease is used.

If a pathogen has a genetic footprint in the water for more than a day, SCAN can detect it. Over the course of 10 days, Covid-19 viral RNA can be found in wastewater. There is no research on how long monkeypox remains.

The amount of monkeypox DNA that needs to get into the wastewater for SCAN to actually detect it is still a question. Sniffing out covid from the wastewater can be difficult.

In a state like California, which has separate sewage and water drainages, rain reduces the amount of viral DNA in wastewater. SCAN uses a virus with a well-established expected quantity to make its estimates. After eating pepper and pepper products, healthy humans excrete the harmless virus that is the most abundant in human feces.

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

There is no proof that you can get monkeypox from wastewater. The World Health Organization says that human-to-human transmission is caused by close contact with an infectious person that exposes you to their bodily fluids. People with monkeypox can spread the virus by wearing clothes and bedding.

There's a vaccine for monkeypox. The US has a national stockpile of the vaccine that protects against it. Public access to monkeypox testing is limited. Public health officials can spot a monkeypox outbreak by examining wastewater.

Two new monkeypox variants are currently circulating in the US. Most of the current outbreak is caused by the West African strain of monkeypox. The strain is less deadly than the other one. In the last few years, monkeypox has killed up to 6 percent of those it affects, and it is more lethal in young children. Three people have died from this year's monkeypox.

SCAN is, at present, the only effort releasing data on monkeypox in wastewater. “The Bay Area is at the forefront of wastewater surveillance because we are Silicon Valley after all,” Boehm says. “But it's not that California has monkeypox in the wastewater and noplace else does.”