SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea this month will start weekly exams of sewage produced by its main cities and cities to trace the unfold of COVID-19 and establish future waves.

Officials on the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency stated Wednesday that wastewater surveillance will probably present a less expensive and extra sustainable software within the nation’s pandemic response. They say it may additionally enhance the detection of different outbreaks, similar to influenza, norovirus or drug-resistant micro organism.

According to the plans, well being employees will conduct exams on sewage samples collected from 64 wastewater services nationwide not less than as soon as every week and recurrently launch analyses of the check outcomes on its web site.

KDCA stated its current trial runs with cities and provincial governments confirmed that the degrees of pathogens present in sewage samples largely aligned with an infection developments in these areas, confirming the worth of testing water launched from taps, bathrooms and bathtubs. Similar exams have additionally been adopted within the United States.

South Korea had maintained a stringent COVID-19 response based mostly on aggressive testing, contact tracing and quarantines in the course of the earlier a part of the pandemic, however has eased most of its virus controls since final yr because the omicron variant’s surge rendered these containment methods irrelevant.

Government officers are additionally desperate to revive a devastated service sector financial system and appeal to extra vacationers. Their plans for wastewater testing are additionally an extension of their bend-but-not-break strategy with COVID-19 that tolerates the coronavirus’ unfold among the many broader inhabitants whereas concentrating medical assets to guard precedence teams.

Lee Sang-won, KDCA’s director of epidemiologic analysis, stated wastewater surveillance may assist the nation’s transition towards a extra reasonably priced virus monitoring regime.

South Korea‘s present system continues to be geared toward monitoring each COVID-19 case by requiring hospitals to report all optimistic exams, an strategy Lee described as costly and laborious. He stated well being officers are contemplating an eventual swap to “sample-based surveillance,” like they do with influenza monitoring, the place solely a sure variety of designated hospitals register their instances.

“When that (transition) comes, we believe wastewater surveillance will function as a very effective tool” for offering complementary data on virus developments, Lee stated throughout a briefing. “Another strength is that we can monitor various pathogens other than COVID-19.”

While coronaviruses inflicting COVID-19 don’t seemingly survive in water for lengthy, Lee stated the nation’s genetic testing strategies would additionally be capable to detect fragments of useless viruses.

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