Prof. "Pinto (@watermicrobe) and his team are testing wastewater samples [for] #COVID19 ..., which can help city officials have a more targeted approach to managing the virus. Where are the clusters? And do we need to ramp up testing in certain areas?" news.northeastern.edu/2020/09/15/are…
Prof. Pinto and his team have partnered with @SomervilleCity because, quoting Mayor @JoeCurtatone, “Adding wastewater testing to our COVID-19 interventions is like adding a smoke alarm to your house. It provides a warning before the problem gets out of control.”
As we saw recently, The Univ. of Arizona detected cases in a dorm using wastewater surveillance and then followed-up with traditional testing to identify two asymptomatic cases likely *before* they transmitted. washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/08…
The team I coordinate @NUnetsi is building machine learning tools to identify #COVID19 in high-throughput, minimally processed wastewater samples. This work is led by our stellar graduate student Wan He and is based on research we started with @TheWill for the CDC back in 2017.
Although "Right now, this project is underway in Massachusetts. But Pinto’s and Scarpino’s long term goal is to apply these same wastewater sample methods to more vulnerable populations such as refugee camps and informal settlements."
This fantastic piece was written by @EmilyArntsen who is one of the all star journalists working for News @Northeastern. They have done an incredible job covering all the #COVID19 research at the University and helping us navigate our interactions with the outside media.
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2/ For those following #H5N1 in CA, there have been positive farms there since late Aug.
@globaldothealth we're working w/ @ThinkGlobalHlth and @CFR_org to maintain a timeline of key events. This tracking allows us to better piece together signals. thinkglobalhealth.org/article/timeli…
3/ I'm concerned about the H5 wastewater signal because it lags far behind the uptick in farms and is better correlated with the rapid rise in human infections. thinkglobalhealth.org/article/timeli…
2/ Milk is pasteurized by heating it briefly to ~72 C (161F). This inactivates pathogens, but does filter the milk. As a result, there can be degraded genomic material from pathogens following pasteurization. PCR, as was done by the FDA, can detect these degraded genomes.
3/ Numerous peer-reviewed studies have found that pasteurization will inactivate influenza A virus, including #H5N1. ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…
2/ As you may know, avian influenza doesn't readily infect humans (and doesn't transmit well from human-to-human) in part because of subtle differences in key cell surface receptors. journals.asm.org/doi/full/10.11…
3/ However, our eyes actually contain the bird-flu-friendly confirmation of the cell surface receptor. This is why eye inflammation is often a symptom of avian influenza infection in humans. thelancet.com/journals/lanin…
2/ Following a convening of @RockefellerFdn's Global Wastewater Action Group, we partnered w/ @MathematicaNow and surveyed representatives of wastewater monitoring programs in 43 countries (16 LMICs, 27 HICs) spanning six continents (when I said "all" I didn't count Antartica).
3/ In high-income countries, composite sampling at centralized treatment plants was most common, whereas grab sampling from surface waters, open drains, and pit latrines was more typical in low-income and middle-income countries.
1/ Data from @WastewaterSCAN shows that rates of SARS-CoV-2, RSV, and influenza have dropped precipitously from their winter peaks!
We still have a ways to go, but things are clearly headed in the right direction.
2/ Although for SARS-CoV-2 we've been hovering at peak levels for over a month and we need to see at least another month of continuously falling prevalence before we're back to more "baseline" levels.
3/ And note how *LONG* the RSV outbreak has been in the US.
We've been above 25% of the peak height for >3 months!