Testing Sewage For Coronavirus: Faster And Better Than Current Medical Tests?

Could a sewage-based coronavirus test provide faster and better results than existing medical tests?

By: Ringo Bones

Current rapid coronavirus antibody tests recently got a bad rap after providing a lot of false-positive results, but could testing a city or community’s sewer system for the COVID 19 virus provide faster and more accurate results? Scientists led by UK’s Centre for Ecology and Hydrology are working on a standardized test to “count” the amount of coronavirus in a wastewater sample. The test could pick up COVID 19 infection spikes up to 10 days earlier than with existing medical based tests. Newcastle University’s Prof. David Graham and his colleagues have now developed a way to quantify the genetic material from the coronavirus.

Early in the COVID 19 pandemic, research revealed that people infected with the virus “shed” viral material in their feces. That insight prompted an interest in “sewage epidemiology”. A similar test used by Chinese epidemiologists working with Italian health authorities during the spring of 2020 produced test results showing that coronavirus could already had been present in Italy near the end of December 2019. The researchers want to fine tune and reproduce this test before it can be rolled out as part of a COVID 19 alert system.

Clean Drinking Water: Vital In Halting The Spread Of COVID 19?

Given the WHO and the US CDC’s hand-washing guidelines are somewhat “water-intensive”, is clean drinking water vital in stopping the spread of COVID 19?

By: Ringo Bones

Given that you have to sing Happy Birthday twice while washing your hands with soap and water – the now recommended length of time required to lower one’s chances of catching COVID 19 to an absolute minimum, the global pandemic that have paused modern life raised concern whenever when it will hit places where clean drinking water is not widely available. The world’s various health organizations have waited in trepidation on how COVID 19 might spread in the poorer parts of Africa and other parts of the world lacking in readily available clean water, not just for drinking, but for washing one’s hands. Add to that a lack of personal protective equipment to the medical doctors and related health workers in these places, it could be the proverbial “perfect storm” when it comes to the spreading of the COVID 19 virus.

Thankfully, at the moment, COVID 19 spread in parts of the world where clean drinking water is a rarity were not as bad as that of the spread of the virus in the world’s major metropolitan areas during the spring of 2020. Maybe it might just be due to sheer luck that the clean water deprived parts of the world has not become a corona-virus hotspot for now at least. But the medical charities currently operating in these places are bolstering local clean drinking water supplies in order to nip an emerging COVID 19 infection in the bud.