Chennai: For the first time, Indian scientists have detected genetic material of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in wastewater.
Since this is being viewed as a breakthrough that paves the way for using wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE)for real-timesurveillance of Covid-19 in the country, they have won appreciation from their peers across the world.
According to the study by scientists in IIT-Gandhinagar, increased gene copies of the virus in Ahmedabad’s wastewater matched the incidence of the disease in the city. With this, India joins the ranks of a handful of countries doing WBE on COVID-19, Andrew Singer, an environmental microbiologist at the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, tweeted.
WBE is a promising approach to understand the status of disease outbreak in a certain catchment by monitoring viral load in wastewater.
Recent studies had reported that the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) is present in the faeces of infected individuals. Genetic material (RNA) from the virus has been found in sewage entering treatment plants.
Because treatment plants collect wastewater across large regions, measuring the level of RNA in untreated wastewater may provide a valuable insight into the percentage of people infected within a region, the researchers stated.
Scientists from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Gandhinagar collaborated with the Gujarat Biotechnology Research Centre (GBRC) and the Gujarat Pollution Control Board (GPCB). They studied samples of wastewater collected on 8 and 27 May from the Old Pirana Waste Water Treatment Plant (WWTP) in Ahmedabad.
The plant receives up to 106 million litres per day (MLD) of influent from the Ahmedabad Civil Hospital which is treating COVID-19 patients, explained Manish Kumar of the Discipline of Earth Sciences, IITGN, who led the research effort. All the three SARS-CoV-2 genes — ORF1ab, N and S — were found in the wastewater coming into the treatment plant, the researchers said.