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the Academy of Medicine calls for systematic monitoring of wastewater

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, published on Tuesday July 07, 2020 at 10:06 pm

Traces of SARS-CoV-2 have been found in the wastewater of many countries.

The Academy of Medicine recommends systematic monitoring on Tuesday of this virus and others in treatment plants in France, since, since the onset of the disease in China, several scientific studies have noted the presence of the coronavirus in the stools of patients.

From toilets to sewers and sewage treatment plants, there is only one step taken by several research groups which quickly found elements of the genome of the new coronavirus in wastewater, in Paris, Amsterdam or Brisbane. .

This research shows that the amount of traces of the virus – “rapidly inactivated in water” – “is correlated with the epidemic curve, preceding the arrival of the wave, following its ascent and decreasing sharply with its regression”, notes the Academy of Medicine.

“This direct temporal relationship with the epidemic wave and especially before it even appears, can make this indicator a precious tool for predicting possible resurgence, by testing the presence of the virus on hundreds of thousands of people,” he adds. she.

She thus pleads for a “systematic” surveillance of the circulation of SARS-CoV-2 by the analysis of wastewater from treatment plants “as long as the virus circulates in the population”. The Academy also recommends extending this surveillance to other viruses such as myxoviruses (which includes influenza), rotaviruses (which cause gastroenteritis) or respiratory syncitial viruses (bronchiolitis) and to “constitute a bank of samples allowing retrospectively to detect any new virus or pathogenic agent which appears in the population thus fixing the beginning of the epidemic “.

From March, Professor Vincent Maréchal, virologist at Sorbonne University, who is participating in studies carried out by the laboratory of the municipal management Eau de Paris, had advocated the creation of a national Sentinel network for monitoring wastewater to allow anticipation of a resumption of the Covid-19 epidemic.

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