SINGAPORE – Dressed in a suit and wearing an N95 mask and face screens, a trio of scientists huddled on a look outside a bedroom of foreign workers. They warned the media built up around him last Wednesday: “Stay at least 2 meters away.”
They pressed some buttons on an automatic sampling machine and, a few minutes later, they made landfall, literally.
The samples, which are tested in a laboratory for the presence of viral material, may reveal the prevalent Covid-19 point in the bedroom.
Associate Professor Ng Lee Ching, director of the Institute of Environmental Health, explains: “If viruses are detected in the wastewater of some dormitories where there is no known transmission, more swab tests can be organized for staff (there) to identify purpose cases. care and isolation. »
This wastewater monitoring programme is part of a series of developments that the Republic implemented in the six months following the notification of the first Covid-19 case here on 23 January.
Human trials of a vaccine developed in Singapore will soon begin, and researchers are only reading the virus here, but also how the human body reacts, by examining the blood of recovered patients for clues as to how the invasive pathogen can be fought.
Insight examines how Singapore has involved its clinical minds in combat and studies of coronavirus, an enemy that is not yet fully understood. According to Professor Leo Yee Sin, executive director of the National Center for Infectious Diseases (NCID): “The fact is that the formula wants to be flexible and scalable to deal with new viruses that may appear in other shapes and sizes.”
Lurking
The immediate identity of inflamed patients will allow them to be temporarily isolated, breaking the chain of transmission.
Traditionally, tests are performed through the collection of swabs in patients and their performance by a procedure known as polymer network reaction (PCR), which detects the presence of viral genetics in a sample.
Such tests are the “reference standard” for testing, says the Ministry of Health.
With the ultimate goal of conducting 40,000 tests a day, efforts are being made to make it more effective. Singapore took about 177,000 taxes in line with millions of others as of July 13, the highest rate among ASEAN countries, according to Worldometer Global Statistics.
“To allow more people to be tested on a singles test, we are also conducting grouped PCR tests,” says the Ministry of Health spokesman. These grouped tests involve combining swabs of up to five other people in a single lab test.
When an organization’s verification is positive, Americans will be re-verified to identify infections.
“Group screening is an effective strategy where the prevalence of infection is likely to be low,” says the MS spokesman.
But other cutting-edge strategies, such as wastewater monitoring, are also being tested to complement – upgrade – existing testing methods.
According to Professor Ng of the NEA: “For Covid-19 program dormitories of detected loose cases, a reading of 0 for viral genetics in wastewater provides a greater assurance that they remain infection-free and allows staff to get to work.”
But the brown, cloudy liquid collected through the automatic sampling device reminded us that it may involve running in dirty conditions.
Scientifically, there were demanding situations to overcome.
As Associate Professor Janelle Thompson, principal investigator at the Center for Environmental Life Sciences Engineering (NTU) at Singapore’s Nanyang University of Technology, says: The concentration of the viral genome consistent with one liter of wastewater can be approximately 10,000 times less concentrated than grades measured in humans. sputum (mucous) the first two weeks of infection.
According to Professor Thompson, “This means that strategies are needed to concentrate viral waste before recovering RNA (genetic virus) or protein signatures used for quantification.”
Professor Thompson’s study center, along with other partners, had made a clinical contribution to the method used for the pattern and wastewater for Covid-19.
The ability to check tewater as an early precautionary formula for Covid-19 was not learned at one point in Eureka.
It is derived from a forged clinical base.
For example, several clinical articles hint at the presence of the virus in stool samples. This implies that inflamed people, coupled with those with mild or nonexistent symptoms, would possibly excrete the virus in the faeces.
And then, in March, dutch researchers went further.
Singapore has conducted its own wastewater tests at water recovery plants, which collect wastewater from across the island, and has discovered a correlation.
As of March 9, although there were 160 cases of Covid-1nine in Singapore, the point of viral genetic curtains in the water was undetectable.
But until the end of March, when the number of cases detected in the bedrooms of foreign workers increased, degrees of viral genetic clothing were detected.
On 20 April, a maximum of 1,426 new cases of coronavirus were reported, the maximum of them foreigners living in dormitories.
Since the beginning of this month, the number of new instances has been less than 400.
According to Professor Ng of the NEA: “Currently, we have noticed a minimum in viral signals in water recovery plants, and this knowledge corroborates the minimization in the number of reported cases and the improvement in the total Covid-19 in Singapore.”
He to a cure
The number of new cases in Singapore may have declined, but life has not completely returned to the pre-Covid era.
There are visual reminders of this everywhere. The face masks, once emblematic of those that run in the fitness sector, have fashion accessories in other prints and colors. Large noisy restaurant meetings have demanded teams of up to five people.
On Monday, the fight opposed to Covid-19 gained a boost, with the release of encouraging effects of human trials of 3 coronavirus vaccines.
The effects showed that the vaccines tested caused harmful side effects and can cause a protective reaction of the human body.
The effects come from the early stages of clinical trials of vaccines developed through the University of Oxford and the multinational drug manufacturer AstraZeneca, CanSino Biologics and the Chinese Army Study Unit, such as the German biotechnology company BioNTech and the US drug manufacturer Pfizer.
One such trial will soon also be conducted in Singapore. In a Phase I/II trial, 108 other healthy people will get a dose of a vaccine developed jointly through the Duke-NUS School of Medicine in Singapore and the US pharmaceutical company Arcturus Therapeutics.
This places the Lunar-Cov19 vaccine with 24 international candidate vaccines that are lately under clinical evaluation.
But experts say that while the published effects of the initial trials are encouraging, much remains to be done to fill the gaps in wisdom left before a vaccine can be marketed. Estimates for this diversity from 12 to 18 months.
Clinical is a three-phase process, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says. On your website.
In Phase I, small teams of others obtain the control vaccine, and it is expanded in Phase II to accompany others with characteristics, such as age and physical health, to which the new vaccine is intended. During Phase III, the vaccine is given to thousands of people and its efficacy and safety are verified.
It will be difficult, even painful,” he said, adding, “Microbes and humans look alike: we try to survive.”
The Ministry of Health says there are classes to learn from countries experiencing an uptick in instances after the resumption of activities.
“Continuous monitoring and compliance with control measures in everyone’s component remains vital to reducing the spread of infection,” MS spokesman said.
“Until a vaccine is found, we will have to get used to a new normal, adapting our routines to live and paint safely despite this global pandemic.”
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