Earlier quoted context omitted.
You don't need live viruses, just their RNA.
... so do we know how fast the RNA degrades in sewer conditions?
Slowly enough to not matter. Unless something is degrading it, RNA can last years.
Sewage could reveal true scale of coronavirus outbreak
21–30 of 62 posts
Re: Sewage could reveal true scale of coronavirus outbreak
#22Re: Sewage could reveal true scale of coronavirus outbreak
#23Interesting. That's also been done for recreational drugs. And artificial vanilla flavoring. I wonder whether sampling from sewage pumping units could be done. That might produce higher resolution data. But getting representative samples would be harder. You'd probably need to take large samples, mix, and subsample.
Here's a recent wastewater analysis study showing the prevalence of several illegal drugs in Europe. http://www.emcdda.europa.eu/topics/pods/waste-water-analysis...
> This report is focused on illicit stimulants. No results for cannabis are reported because cannabis use is estimated by measuring its main metabolite (THC-COOH), which is the only suitable biomarker found so far, but is excreted in a low percentage. More research is needed to understand the excretion percentage of THC-COOH or find alternative biomarkers (Causanilles et al., 2017a).
this is the second sewage testing paper I’ve read today. Why are these so incredibly interesting and fun to read when compared to the other testing documents I’ve read haha.
Re: Sewage could reveal true scale of coronavirus outbreak
#24I'm sure there are great reasons, but why is it that we can't detect the virus in wastewater at a personal level? Could this be a less invasive way to test for covid19?
It could also look at other markers as a proxy for possible covid infection. If we see that a whole block is getting an unusual amount of sicknesses, we might want to investigate/quarantine that block.
Re: Sewage could reveal true scale of coronavirus outbreak
#25There’s a YC company [0] already doing this.
Re: Sewage could reveal true scale of coronavirus outbreak
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
... so do we know how fast the RNA degrades in sewer conditions?
Slowly enough to not matter. Unless something is degrading it, RNA can last years.
I’m pretty sure ribonucleases are found everywhere (even in sewage) so if enough are present it would break down all RNA fast. RNases come from skin and dust, for example.
Re: Sewage could reveal true scale of coronavirus outbreak
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
... so do we know how fast the RNA degrades in sewer conditions?
Slowly enough to not matter. Unless something is degrading it, RNA can last years.
lol no, rna degrades if you so much as look at it. dna is quite a bit more stable.
Re: Sewage could reveal true scale of coronavirus outbreak
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
Seeing papers like that, I really appreciate what tex did for scientific publishing. (Yes, I understand formatting was not their top concern right now)
Maybe, equally we have every idiot going to the useless John Hopkins site because it looks pretty. I guess it's an arms game in part.
Thank you! At least someone understand my frustration. When I try to compare countries, it somehow manages to insert New York along with a few other US states as countries. He/She/They might be a good React/GraphQL ninja(s), but definitely skipped out on the ETL course.
Re: Sewage could reveal true scale of coronavirus outbreak
#29What a wonderful symmetry to the cholera outbreak in 1854 in London, where John Snow traced the sources to drinking water wells: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1854_Broad_Street_cholera_outb...
Re: Sewage could reveal true scale of coronavirus outbreak
#30This should also allow to monitor for mutations of the Covid 19, whereas it would be impractical to do at an individual level. It would give an early warning signal.