A sewage wastewater study conducted by the Italian National Institute of Health (ISS) has examined 40 samples and determined that traces of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, were present in water samples dating back to mid-December.
A Thursday news release from the ISS detailed that a recent analysis of 40 wastewater samples collected from October 2019 to February 2020, alongside 24 control samples, had identified the earliest traces of SARS-CoV-2 RNA from water obtained on December 18, 2019, in the Italian cities of Milan and Turin. The first reported cases emerged from Wuhan, China, on December 31.
Polymerase chain reaction testing allows scientists to identify fragments of RNA from SARS-CoV-2 remaining in the water.
“This research may help us understand the beginning of virus circulation in Italy,” Giuseppina La Rosa, an expert in environmental wastewater with the ISS who co-led the study, told Reuters.
She noted in the ISS news release that samples of the country’s wastewater have been collected by herself, Marcello Iaconelli, Giusy Bonanno Ferraro, Pamela Mancini and Carolina Veneri since 2007.
La Rosa and her co-authors’ research comes in the wake of similar analyses by scientists in the Netherlands and France.
Dutch researchers concluded that the first traces of the virus were confirmed in sewage water samples taken on March 5 from a wastewater plant in the Utrecht, Netherlands, city of Amersfoort.
A higher concentration of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in wastewater correlates with a higher amount of infected individuals nearby.
Sputnik reported in May that a hospital in Paris confirmed it had treated Amirouche Hammar, the country’s first COVID-19 patient, on December 27, 2019 – one month before the French Ministry of Health’s first announcement of infections in the country and four days before the World Health Organization’s China bureau was informed of multiple cases of “pneumonia of unknown etiology” on December 31.
The ISS told Reuters that it intends to launch a new study in July to monitor the wastewater of tourist resorts.
Sourse: sputniknews.com
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