Old News but curious .......20 Jan 2021 16:19
From November .... 5.2 anyone know of any other company developing a ‘real time’ automated detection system???
Thanks in advance
Wastewater COVID-19 Monitoring in the UK: Summary for SAGE – 19/11/20
5 Operationalising the WW Programme and future plans
In England the National Surveillance Programme, upstream and near-to-source pilots in Exeter, Pendle
and Southampton, and School’s testing pilots have been operational for several months (See Appendix
7.1). The pilots continue to generate significant scientific insights and address gaps in the
understanding of wastewater epidemiology. We are expanding the English National Programme,
sampling treatment works to cover 80% of the population, and supporting mass testing in eight core
cities and Greater London, scaling work we started in Liverpool, with further expansion proposed.
In Scotland, the network has been kept under weekly review. As COVID-19 Protection Levels in
Scotland are designated at a Local Authority Level, the network is currently under review to see how
it can best provide discrimination at a Local Authority level.
In Wales, wastewater monitoring is now also being used to support mass testing at national infection
hotspots to inform local decision making on where and when to test (e.g. Merthyr Tydfil). The
approach is now being upscaled and new automated technical work streams are being implemented.
The work is also being expanded to include other viruses of public health concern (e.g. Influenza A/B,
norovirus, hepatitis A/E).
5.1 Additional use-cases
Beyond identifying community-scale hotspots, wastewater monitoring can be applied at building-scale
for the management of outbreaks in discrete populations. Learning from our work in the small city,
upstream pilot and in schools, we are investigating the potential to use building-scale monitoring to
prioritise the distribution of mass-testing, for example in prisons and critical points in the food supply
chain.
As vaccines are distributed, it will be important to maintain a pulse-check in areas of high risk and
potential low uptake. Wastewater monitoring presents a unique opportunity to track the effects of
vaccination across a range of population sizes in a non-invasive way.
5.2 Technology development
The development of an automated and on-site technology for sampling, processing and analysis of
SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater is underway. A workshop with key academic and industry partners led to the identification of three key areas for development focused on (i) the automation of analysis in the
field to enable detection and/or quantification of SARS-CoV-2 RNA near to the point of sampling, (ii)
the development of ‘real time’ automated detection and/or quantification of SARS-CoV-2 RNA at the
point of sampling, (iii) the development of technology that could be integrated into the network for
wider health monitoring, for example at pumping station