Hunting for the coronavirus in Madrid’s sewage | Madrid

After registering more than 16,000 deaths in four months from the coronavirus pandemic, the Government of the Community of Madrid fears a new outbreak of the disease. Risk is objective, according to all regional managers. It is imperative to design an alert and containment plan with which to try to avoid a new catastrophe. And its basic pillars were announced yesterday by Deputy Minister Antonio Zapatero, the Czar of Covid, who is called, in the Assembly. Six robots have been purchased to multiply the number of diagnostic tests daily. A hotel with 174 beds is being set up for those who cannot isolate themselves at home. A new hospital will be built. And the sewage that passes through the pipes of the Canal de Isabel II will be analyzed in the hope that they warn that contagions increase when community transmission can still be contained.

“We are working, and it also seems to me a very interesting aspect of this Community, in matters of sewage,” Zapatero explained yesterday in an appearance at the Assembly. “There are publications, there is scientific evidence, in several countries, of the presence of coronaviruses, see news about Italy, where RNA remains of the virus appeared, 40 days before the first case,” he continued. “We are working with the Canal to make weekly qualitative and quantitative detections of up to 300 Canal stations to try to get ahead and protect the citizenry.”

The Ministry for Ecological Transition has just invested almost two million euros in commissioning the public group Tragsa to urgently carry out analyzes to “control the presence of microbiological contamination in inland waters, particularly in urban wastewater and in areas of bath, in order to identify the presence of the SARS-CoV-2 virus ”.

A job that had been done in Madrid for weeks, and that will now try to scale.

Thus, the Enterovirus laboratory of the National Center for Microbiology has already started a study of the presence of SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater from different wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) in Madrid and other populations in the region. Its specialists have been analyzing these liquids for 20 years in search of other viruses, such as polio. And now they hope to act as an “early warning system to identify early the presence of SARS-CoV-2 both at the present time and in possible outbreaks or second waves of the infection,” according to a report by the scientific analysis group of coronavirus from the Carlos III Health Institute.

What works the Canal de Isabel II, which is the largest public company in the region?

“The technical managers of Canal de Isabel II have established that the number of points for taking samples in wastewater could be 300, distributed between wastewater treatment plants and points in the sewage network,” explain the company, who He is finalizing the details of the sampling program with the Ministry of the Environment, which is run by Paloma Martín. “Right now they are determining those whose access is most favorable for carrying out these works,” they continue. “Locations have already been established at 50 points in Madrid,” they add. “During these months, in addition, Canal de Isabel II with its water quality and R & D & I teams has worked on a methodology for taking these samples to ensure the correct results of the analyzes.”

With the Government as a whole insisting that the Adolfo Suárez-Madrid Barajas airport may be a “hotbed” for new cases despite the control measures established by the central executive, Zapatero explained yesterday other projects to avoid or minimize a re-emergence of the disease .

Thus, the Deputy Minister of Public Health and Plan Covid-19, announced that six robots will be implanted in public hospitals that will allow 6,000 more PCR tests per day than now – for a total of 30,000 each day; He spoke of “an elasticity plan” in public and private centers that would allow doubling the available beds in case of regrowth; and reiterated the intention to continue with the construction of a hospital for pandemics that will cost 50 million.

“Residences are the main focus of possible outbreaks,” Zapatero warned about the centers in the region, where almost 6,000 people have died during the pandemic. In fact, more than a dozen of them remain closed for new positives among their residents. A reminder that it is combinable that the worst is over and that the war on the virus has not yet been won.

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