In search of coronaviruses in wastewater

Now the demand for waste­water test­ing for coro­n­avirus­es is also grow­ing by leaps and bounds in Ger­many. On March 17, 2021, the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion called on EU mem­ber states to reg­u­lar­ly test waste­water for coronaviruses.

Ini­tial pilot projects in Ger­many and numer­ous stud­ies show that an incip­i­ent infec­tion can be detect­ed about a week in advance. This pro­vides munic­i­pal­i­ties with an ear­ly warn­ing sys­tem to ini­ti­ate appro­pri­ate mea­sures in good time. “Mon­i­tor­ing waste­water pro­vides exten­sive data quick­ly and cost-effec­tive­ly to reli­ably ana­lyze the spread of the virus in the pop­u­la­tion and to detect changes in the inci­dence of infec­tion at an ear­ly stage,” explains Dr. Lisa Strauch, micro­bi­ol­o­gy work­group leader and lab­o­ra­to­ry expert for waste­water test­ing at SGS Ana­lyt­ics in Fellbach.

“We rec­om­mend that munic­i­pal­i­ties col­lect ini­tial data now to be able to react more quick­ly to the infec­tion events next fall.”

- Dr. Strauch

 

The com­pa­ny is a mem­ber of the “CoroMoni” net­work ini­ti­at­ed by the DWA (Ger­man Asso­ci­a­tion for Water, Waste­water and Waste). This com­mu­ni­ca­tion plat­form bun­dles know-how and the rapid exchange of expe­ri­ence between sci­en­tists from Ger­many, Aus­tria, Switzer­land and the Nether­lands, rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Robert Koch Insti­tute, the Fed­er­al Envi­ron­ment Agency, the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion, and insti­tutes and lab­o­ra­to­ries. Through this exchange with active research insti­tu­tions, the lab­o­ra­to­ry experts ensure that the test­ing of waste­water for coro­n­avirus­es is always car­ried out in accor­dance with the lat­est sci­en­tif­ic findings.

The Group offers com­mu­ni­ties an all-round ser­vice for this pur­pose. Inter­est­ed par­ties can obtain advice from the lab­o­ra­to­ry on details of the sam­pling itself, as well as on the fre­quen­cy and suit­able sam­pling points. In addi­tion, waste­water treat­ment plants are pro­vid­ed with spe­cial sam­pling kits that enable the sam­ples to be sent back to the lab­o­ra­to­ry quick­ly and under refrig­er­a­tion. After all, it is cru­cial for the suc­cess of waste­water test­ing that the results are avail­able quickly.

Numer­ous stud­ies con­firm what was already appar­ent at the begin­ning of the pan­dem­ic: Com­po­nents of the COVID-19 virus can be detect­ed in waste­water, and the amount of virus com­po­nents found cor­re­lates with the num­ber of infect­ed peo­ple in the catch­ment area of the waste­water treat­ment plant. In the Nether­lands, cur­rent fig­ures on virus par­ti­cles found in waste­water are already pub­lished on a ded­i­cat­ed website.

In Swe­den, SGS Ana­lyt­ics has been com­mis­sioned to devel­op a com­pa­ra­ble online mon­i­tor­ing sys­tem. The exam­i­na­tion of a 24-hour sam­ple from the influ­ent of a waste­water treat­ment plant is com­pa­ra­ble to an anonymized mass test of the pop­u­la­tion. Only sig­nif­i­cant­ly cheap­er and faster. Waste­water test­ing pro­vides a sen­si­tive sig­nal of whether SARS-CoV­‑2 infec­tions are present in the pop­u­la­tion and whether the num­ber of infect­ed indi­vid­u­als is increas­ing or decreasing.