A global wastewater surveillance program could have stopped the spread of COVID-19, Northeastern researcher says

Sat, 12 Aug 2023 04:15:12 +1000

Andrew Pam <xanni [at] glasswings.com.au>

Andrew Pam
https://news.northeastern.edu/2023/07/12/wastewater-covid-tracking/

"Maintaining and enhancing wastewater surveillance programs that sprung up
around the globe in response to COVID-19 will be key to halting the next
pandemic, a Northeastern researcher says.

“If we’d had the kind of wastewater surveillance systems that now exist in most
places, I think we would have stopped” COVID-19 from spreading, says Samuel V.
Scarpino, director of AI and Life Sciences at the Institute for Experiential AI
at Northeastern.

Scarpino is co-author of a new paper in The Lancet Global Health that says a
survey of 43 countries shows the promise of wastewater surveillance as an early
warning system in mitigating future global health threats.

“The paper is the first international assessment of what folks did during the
pandemic and what we need to do to ensure that this technology is useful going
forward,” he says.

“We want to make sure that the infrastructure and the knowledge that was built
during the pandemic around wastewater surveillance can be leveraged for routine
infectious disease surveillance, and we’ll be ready the next time we have to
respond to an international infectious disease threat,” Scarpino says."

Via Violet Blue’s Pandemic Roundup: July 13, 2023
https://www.patreon.com/posts/pandemic-roundup-86026386

Cheers,
       *** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net               Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/                 Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/            Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/               Manager, Serious Cybernetics

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