San Francisco International Airport has introduced a program with the U. S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The U. S. is looking for lines of emerging coronavirus variants.
Traces of the virus that causes COVID-19 can be detected in people’s feces when they are infected, even if they don’t have symptoms.
The airport announced Tuesday that CDC partner Concentric through Ginkgo, the public biosecurity and fitness unit of Boston-based artificial biology company Ginkgo Bioworks, installed an automated device that will collect wastewater samples from various foreign flights arriving at SFO.
These wastewater samples will then be sent to laboratories for analysis.
“As we know from the COVID-19 pandemic, pathogens can spread around the world, affecting travel and commerce,” Dr. Anna Stuart said in a news release Tuesday. Cindy Friedman, leader of CDC’s travel fitness branch. early detection of new variants of COVID-19 and other pathogens that can cause epidemics and pandemics. CDC appreciates working with SFO to further strengthen those efforts. “
SFO will be the first airport to launch this pilot program with the CDC, airport director Ivar Satero said in the announcement.
The airport has also been concerned about offering wastewater samples to the University of California San Francisco Medical Center to help identify emerging variants of the coronavirus, but those samples were taken from the airport’s wastewater treatment plant.
Aircraft wastewater testing refers to the collection of passenger aircraft wastewater from individual advertisements.
“You can get it off the plane in less than two minutes, put it temporarily in a lab network, we take care of all of this,” Matt McKnight, chief executive of Ginkgo Bioworks, told CNN in January.
Once those wastewater samples arrive at a diagnostic lab for analysis, scientists scan them for known or unknown virus lines, such as variants of SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19.
When samples are positive for the virus, scientists continue genome sequencing, which takes five to seven days, to accurately identify the variant of that virus. Scientists can then analyze their findings and submit them to the CDC.
Monitoring wastewater for lines of coronavirus variants is a “validated” clinical procedure, which is no longer on its pilot, and planes are the next logical step, McKnight said.
The declaration of EE. UU. de a COVID-19 public fitness emergency will end Thursday, but White House COVID-19 response coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha said he will continue to monitor wastewater for emerging variants.
“If you think about the knowledge that’s valuable today, wastewater tracking is the most productive way to assess infections in the community,” Jha said, noting that verification positivity is no longer presented as a complete picture “because other people just don’t check as much” due to ease verification needs and an accumulation in verification fatigue. among other factors.
“So when I look at the data every day to assess where we are with infections, I look at the information about wastewater. This will continue, and sewage now covers most Americans,” he said. “When I check to assess the severity of the disease. Array. . . It’s hospitalizations and deaths. “