Small traces of many pathogens, such as viruses we may be infected with, are excreted when we go to the toilet. Ultimately, these agents find their way to municipal wastewater treatment plants where sewage samples can be taken and the levels of these pathogens measured.

This field of science is called wastewater-based epidemiology and it may be a way to track the spread of COVID across the world via airports. It’s already a powerful tool to monitor the levels of infectious diseases circulating in a community. It’s also relatively simple, inexpensive, and, most importantly, provides a snapshot of the health of a whole community (not only those people who seek medical help).

Wastewater-based epidemiology has been used for the early detection of poliovirus for decades, and it has been implemented to monitor SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) in more than 70 countries since the start of the pandemic. Wastewater surveillance allows us to not only track when SARS-CoV-2 is present, but it can identify different variants of the virus too.

In a new study, we tested the wastewater from planes arriving in the UK, and at airport terminals, for SARS-CoV-2. Our findings suggest that wastewater monitoring could be a useful tool for tracking COVID at international airports and other travel hubs. This could potentially help monitor how infectious diseases cross international borders.

Detecting COVID in wastewater

We sought to detect SARS-CoV-2 in sewage taken at the arrival terminals of three international airports in the UK (Heathrow, Bristol and Edinburgh), and from about 30 planes arriving into these airports, during March 2022. For aircraft surveillance, we collected the sewage samples from vacuum trucks which remove wastewater from the aircraft.

Most samples from both the planes and the terminals contained high concentrations of SARS-CoV-2, suggesting there were many people unwittingly bringing COVID back to the UK.

On March 18 2022 the UK government lifted the requirement for unvaccinated passengers to take a pre-departure test and another on day two after arriving. We studied sewage samples from both before and after these restrictions ended, and found high concentrations of SARS-CoV-2 regardless of when the samples were taken.

Read Full Story https://www.google.com/amp/s/theconversation.com/amp/we-tested-the-wastewater-from-planes-to-detect-covid-among-travellers-heres-what-we-found-198100