KWR in the news G.J. Medema - Is it safe to come out of lockdown? Check the sewer

“The world is eager to come out of lockdown. But if countries simply return to business as usual, new outbreaks of Covid-19 will follow. The only solution that public health experts see is to keep careful track of the coronavirus and clamp down on new flare-ups. The trouble is that the most obvious way to monitor the virus — testing person by person — has already proved to be a huge, expensive challenge. Experts say we’re nowhere near the scale we need to get a good picture of the pandemic. Now some scientists are looking for the virus not in our noses, blood or spit, but somewhere else: in our sewers.”

““We started before the virus entered our country,” said Gertjan Medema of the KWR Water Research Institute in the Netherlands. He and his colleagues created a test for the coronavirus and began using it in wastewater in early February.”

(Citations: Zimmer, C. – KWR in the news G.J. Medema – Is it safe to come out of lockdown? Check the sewer – www.nytimes.com (2020)1 May)