Indian scientists find Covid-19 gene in wastewater, hailed by global community

With this, India “joins the ranks of a handful of countries doing WBE on Covid-19”, Andrew Singer, an environmental microbiologist at the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, said on Twitter.

Scientists in India have for the first time detected genetic material of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in wastewater, a breakthrough that paves the way for using wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) for real-time surveillance of Covid-19 in the country.

WBE is a promising approach to understand the status of disease outbreak in a certain catchment by monitoring viral load in wastewater. (Reuters representational image)

The study, led by scientists in IIT-Gandhinagar, found that increased “gene copies” of the virus in Ahmedabad’s wastewater matched the incidence of the disease in the city. With this, India “joins the ranks of a handful of countries doing WBE on Covid-19”, Andrew Singer, an environmental microbiologist at the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology, said on Twitter.