E-Paper
NIBMG scientists to look for early signs of Covid-19 outbreak in city’s sewage water
Earlier in April, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) had started a similar project to understand Covid-19 variants in the community
Scientists from the National Institute of Biomedical Genomics (NIBMG) in West Bengal will soon start a project in which they will be looking for early signs of Covid-19 outbreak in sewage samples collected from various parts of the city.
Experts said that patients infected with SARS-CoV-2, even if they are asymptomatic, will shed the virus in their excreta. This virus can be detected in sewage water. This allows wastewater surveillance to serve as an early warning that Covid-19 is spreading in a community.
“Talks are going on and we are doing it in collaboration with the state health department. We expect to start the project in July. We will do it in Kolkata. Discussions are on to start in other cities and towns in the state as well such as in Burdwan, Midnapore and Malda district among others so that we can cover a wider area,” said Arindam Maitra, officiating director of NIBMG.
Earlier in April, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) had started a similar project to understand Covid-19 variants in the community. Soon after the outbreak of the pandemic, the Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar (IIT-Gn) joined a global consortium of 51 premier universities and research institutes to undertake surveillance of sewage water to help determine and quantify the excretion of the Sars-Cov-2 virus, which caused Covid-19.
“Not only the virus can be detected from the sewage water, but we can also do the sequencing up to a certain extent, which may give us an idea about the variants. By monitoring the waste water samples we can say whether the infection load of a particular neighbourhood is increasing,” he said.
In September 2020, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the national public health agency of the United States started the National Wastewater Surveillance System (NWSS).
“There is a gap of at least 15- 20 days from the time we start getting Covid-19 virus in waste water and the time there is an outbreak of the disease in a particular locality. This window may be utilised by the state health department to intervene to prevent any outbreak,” said Souvik Mukherjee, a scientist from NIBMG who will be heading the project.
On July 2, West Bengal registered 1,499 new Covid-19 cases up from 57 on June 2. Three people died in the last 24 hours.
With Covid-19 numbers rising again in the state, the Mamata Banerjee administration has mandated the use of masks and sanitisers and maintaining social distance in public places once again.
