Use of sewage surveillance for COVID-19 to guide public health response: A case study in Hong Kong.

ABSTRACT: Sewage surveillance could help develop proactive response to the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, but currently there are limited reports about examples in practical exercises. Here, we report a use case of intensified sewage surveillance to initiate public health action to thwart a looming Delta variant outbreak in Hong Kong. On 21 June 2021, albeit under basically contained COVID-19 situation in Hong Kong, routine sewage surveillance identified a high viral load of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) in a sewage sample from one site covering over 33,000 population, suggesting infected cases living in the respective sewershed. The use of a newly developed method based on allele-specific real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction (AS RT-qPCR) ser

SUBMITTER: Deng Y 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8769675 | biostudies-literature | 2022 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature