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Comment by dopylitty | Hacker News Reader

They claim "the first report of detection of SARS-CoV-2 in sewage" but if I search Google News for 'covid wastewater' I find several reports of similar studies going back months.

That aside I wonder if there's already an infrastructure in place for mass testing of wastewater for all sorts of things. If it's useful for covid it might be useful for other diseases or health problems.

Then I start to wonder about the privacy implications of mass sewage collection. If it was localized I can imagine an authoritarian state using it to enforce anti-drug or anti-beef policies.

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This article is almost two months old. If I'm not mistaken, these researchers were actually the first to test and find S-CoV-2 in wastewater. Their data was shared unpublished, in the name of haste. This led to a prompt parallel study by Lodder & Husman, who hit publication within days of the study named in the parent article.

These are the folks who set off the whole 'testing wastewater for covid' thing. They're not falsely claiming to be first on the scene. You're being misled by the context, because someone posted an old article.

Yes true, was inspired by this story: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23319800

If I still could I would change the title to correctly reflect it's age.

Since at least 2011, the Dutch test wastewater of cities for traces of drugs, such as cocaine and XTC, and use this to inform public policy.

Already in 2009 it was known that coronaviruses can survive and remain infectuous in sewage water for up to two weeks.

Early covid wastewater research mostly focuses on waste water and stool as a possible infection vector, and in March 3rd the WHO suggested that COVID patients use their own toilet, to avoid spread through aerosolization during flushing, and to increase chlorination efforts of sewage systems.

From the first outbreak of SARS-CoV, it was found that apartment plumbing can be an infection vector, and due to this, in Hong Kong, people suggest closing the toilet lid before flushing.

> people suggest closing the toilet lid before flushing

I was taught to always close the lid if you weren't actively using the toilet.

It always weirds me out a bit that the majority of people leave the lid up. What's the point of having a lid if you're not going to use it?

> I was taught to always close the lid if you weren't actively using the toilet.

The difference here is in: close the lid before flushing

Well I was taught to do it in one motion. One hand closes the lid and the other pushes the flusher. So it is closed by the time things start spraying around.

But if it’s closed then how do you know everything went down? I’ve had some double flushers in my day.

There's no evidence commonly presented the lid does anything health related.

Touching the toilet is considered bad.

That's the reason please don't.

I guess people consider the lid aesthetic.

Not just aesthetic! It also turns the toilet into a seat. Useful for various activities such as dealing with young kids and pets.

> If it's useful for covid it might be useful for other diseases or health problems.

Wastewater surveillance is an important part of the global polio eradication project.

Most wastewater treatment systems require ongoing lab testing on a regular basis. This is to test for bacteria and treatment chemicals to ensure the system is cleaning the water effectively and not dumping harmful chemicals into the water systems. I'm certain these tests could be modified to check for other chemicals.

I might have a unique perspective here: I'm a virology PhD student, and I worked in a wastewater treatment testing laboratory for some time.

Technically, what you are describing is possible. It's actually not difficult, and many communities have been doing it [1].

The article title is misleading, however. Now that we know the genome of the nCoV, we know its gene products, and we can design targeted tests for it, it is a straightforward. However, this is not an early warning sign for eventual other nCoVs that may occur. This will only work for this one, and other discovered ones. This is not going to help us identify a new, unknown coronavirus outbreak.

As far as discovery goes, it's a much more involved and delicate process, and not one I'd trust to the low margin, low wage, low talent industry that unfortunately is sewage testing.

https://www.bozemandailychronicle.com/coronavirus/wastewater...

Yeah I’m sure this is at least the third article I’ve seen posted in the last month or 2 boasting about being the first to use sewerage to detect the virus.

Yes article from March. By now also published about by Nature (at least online), and also part as of the signals they are looking at in the NL

From what I gather, according to the Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment, they started sampling on a weekly basis from the 17th of February [1].

To paraphrase, they didn't find anything the first two weeks, but samples from the 2nd, 9th and 16th of March showed signs of the virus, four days after the first person in the Netherlands tested positive for the virus.

They mention that they have applied this technique for the norovirus, measles and others before.

1. https://www.rivm.nl/nieuws/nieuwe-coronavirus-aangetroffen-i...

Thanks, interesting! Shame they didn't start in the south in februari, could have made a difference.

I doubt this would become a privacy issue -- testing is done at the processing plant, which aggregates sewage from a large number of sources. They won't be able to track whether you powdered your nose yesterday or not.

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