In Marseille (Bouches-du-Rhône), the battalion of marine firefighters (2,300 soldiers and 100 civilians) has been an institution for eighty-two years. First aid, urban fires, forest or ship fires … its interventions are varied and numerous. One outing every five minutes on average.
To these rather “classic” missions has been added a new type of intervention for six months, epidemic obliges: the search for Covid-19 in wastewater. The coronavirus is, in fact, present in the stool six days before the appearance of the very first symptoms. This hunt in the sewers thus allows marine firefighters to have a head start on the virus.
More than 200 samples per week
Covered with a white jumpsuit, using a pole (or a chain) and a kind of cup (plastic or metal), these soldiers collect 4 ml of dirty water, which they then pass on to their fellow scientists the cell identification. The latter then start looking for the presence or not of Covid-19 in the liquid. In about three quarters of an hour, the result falls!
Marseilles firefighters can thus quickly and precisely determine where the virus is nestled in the city, by district, building blocks, nursing homes… Each week, they take more than 200 samples. Valuable mapping, a decision-making aid tool which then enables health authorities to implement enhanced screening, or even isolate certain inhabitants.
In Thionville too
With their technical expertise, eleven firefighters were dispatched Sunday February 14 to Moselle, Metz and Thionville, in order to carry out the same research for Covid-19. For a week, or even a little longer.
As announced by the Minister of Health, Thursday February 11, this department in eastern France is currently facing a significant circulation of English and South African variants. A system aimed at containing the epidemic was therefore put in place very quickly. Marseille’s mobile biological intervention column thus occupies a prominent place.
Note that, since April, traces of the virus have also been sought and analyzed in several wastewater treatment plants. An Obépine network (epidemiological observatory in wastewater) has been set up in 150 stations (out of the 20,000 in the territory). One way to anticipate any epidemic rebound. A priori, this is the same work that the marine firefighters do, but, for the time being, the network does not yet play the role of triggering operational scouting missions (the mesh is much larger), as was previously could be tested in Marseille.
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