Posted on 7/12/2022
A team from Scripps Research and the University of California, San Diego, in collaboration with the San Diego Epidemiology and Research for COVID Health (SEARCH) alliance, reports that with just two teaspoons of raw sewage, they can accurately determine the genetic mixture of SARS-CoV-2 variants present within a population and identify new variants of concern up to 14 days before traditional clinical testing.
In San Diego wastewater, the group detected the Omicron variant 11 days before it was first reported clinically.
Their algorithm, named “Freyja”, for identifying SARS-CoV-2 variants in wastewater, described in an article “Wastewater sequencing reveals early cryptic SARS-CoV-2 variant transmission” in Nature, has been adapted by many public health labs, and is a boon to ...