THE presence of degraded remains of COVID-19 in wastewater at the Burwood Beach treatment plant provides another layer of information for health officials attempting to understand the spread of coronavirus across the region.
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While Burwood is the region's biggest wastewater treatment plant, it is just one of 19 operated by Hunter Water.
The Newcastle Herald understands that at least a half dozen more plants were tested, with negative results.
CORONAVIRUS CROSS:
The tests by Hunter New England Local Health District are part of a statewide NSW Health sewage surveillance research program, with the testing locations based upon areas of concern identified by the state's Chief Officer, Dr Kerry Chant.
Wastewater is regularly tested for a range of materials, including viral and bacterial pathogens known to be potential health risks because they are robust enough to survive conventional wastewater treatment processes.
The present scientific understanding is that COVID-19 is not particularly robust outside of its host.
The samples found at Burwood Beach are remnants of the coronavirus's genetic material, known as RNA (short for ribonucleic acid).
Hunter Water says there is no evidence that COVID-19 has been transmitted to people via wastewater, It says detergents and other substances in sewage "inactivate" or kill the virus before it reaches the plant.
Although the Burwood "positive" is important in itself, it's to be hoped the NSW tests lead to estimates of infection levels, even if the sewage through the plant represents the co-mingled wastes of 200,000 people.
A CSIRO-led "proof of concept" study published on August 1 used samples taken from two Brisbane wastewater plants in March to come up with estimates of infected people described as being "in reasonable agreement with clinical observations".
Back in April, Melbourne Water announced an "innovative COVID-19 sewage sampling project" designed to "keep authorities informed about potential infection clusters within communities and provide timelines of potential outbreaks".
The Victorian cases still came racing back, as we know.
There are limits, then, on what wastewater testing can do, but at the very least it provides another way of measuring the presence of this invisible organism, which has turned our world on its head.
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