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Tracking COVID-19 with wastewater

  • Title:Tracking COVID-19 with wastewater
  • Author:David A. Larsen, Krista R. Wigginton
  • Abstract:Understanding the full extent of the COVID-19 pandemic is an ongoing challenge for public-health officials. Any epidemiological indicator has biases and limitations. Diagnostic testing capacity may be insufficient; hospitalizations lag infections by weeks and do not report on people with mild or asymptomatic disease. Experience with other viral diseases has shown that monitoring sewage for traces of a pathogen enables effective surveillance of entire communities, providing a sensitive signal of whether the pathogen is present in the population and whether transmission is increasing or declining. Researchers around the world are now pursuing the same approach for COVID-19 with the hope that wastewater data can supplement current measures of its prevalence. The novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, has already been detected in wastewater.
  • SourceNature Biotechnology
  • Post:2020-09-29 10:58:07

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