Research on domestic sewage and becoming a trend in the region
‘Stool Mechanics’ to Observe and Predict Viruses
Widespread use due to COVID-19
Predicting the prevention of an unknown epidemic
In 2014, when an Ebola patient was transferred to Emory Hospital in Atlanta, USA, the fear of an unknown infectious disease appeared in many ways. In particular, there was an opinion among nearby residents that there is a risk of Ebola infection if the waste water from the hospital flows to the local sewage treatment facility. There was even an article that the county would stop the hospital’s sewer service, but it was not clear as it happened to be a communication problem between the county and the hospital. It was not known that the special ward that housed Ebola patients had a special purification system that sterilized not only medical waste but also waste water. As such, concerns about unknown diseases spread further than one might imagine, beyond the air and into the sewage.
This concern has been transformed into a new strategy throughout the COVID-19 era. Let’s think back. How many and how many new types of coronavirus are there in the feces discharged by people who may be asymptomatically infected in general wards without special sewage treatment facilities? How can we detect these viruses? The method of detecting viruses and their mutations through domestic sewage and observing the trend of viruses that are common in a particular area is called ‘sewage epidemiology’.
In the United States, sewage mechanics were only used to prevent the spread of drugs or tuberculosis, but with Corona 19, the scope of use has expanded. In 2020, the National Wastewater Surveillance System (NWSS) was established. By observing the rate of variation and detection of COVID-19 in wastewater from 159 counties in approximately 40 states, it was an opportunity to provide an early warning about the spread of COVID-19 in the community.
In July 2022, a patient with symptoms of poliovirus was reported in New York State. Poliovirus, the virus that causes polio, is preventable with a vaccine and has disappeared from most of the world. Local outbreaks of poliovirus type 1 occur only in Pakistan and Afghanistan. In the United States, no wild-type poliovirus infection has been reported since 1979.
At this time, the dynamics of sewage reappears. Poliovirus is transmitted orally through faeces contaminated with the virus. State quarantine authorities began tracking sewage samples taken four months ago to monitor Corona 19 in four neighboring counties, including Rockland County, where the patient occurred. After that, around 10 months of data from a total of 9 counties was obtained and analysed. Out of a total of 100 positive cases, 93 were genetically linked to the first patient’s poliovirus, and accounted for vaccine-derived or vaccine-mutant viruses. 7%. The first patient was infected with poliovirus from a live vaccine abroad, scientific evidence that it was already spreading the virus in the community before symptoms appeared. Based on this, New York State declared a state of emergency by executive order, and urgently recommended polio vaccination. After Corona 19, it was an event that once again raised the fear of New York about the epidemic.
We are forgetting the terrifying 2020 due to the repetition of the Corona 19 epidemic. The reason why Corona 19 has become a topic like the flu is because a vaccine has been developed by the whole world and the shield of quarantine that the people have been whole working together. It is also because a system has been built that can filter sewage closely, investigate the molecular level, and predict diseases.
Korea actually tested and proved that the sewage mechanics system works for Sejong City during the COVID-19 pandemic. Currently, 17 local government health and environmental research institutions, academia (Sejong University-Industry Cooperation Institute of Korea University), and the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) are conducting a pilot project to establish a monitoring system national for infectious diseases. According to data from Sejong City, not only COVID-19, but also viral and bacterial food poisoning epidemics and respiratory viruses such as respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) were detected, which coincided with diseases common in the actual community .
With the climate crisis at hand, scientists are constantly warning that infectious diseases such as Corona 19 could threaten us again in the near future. We hope that by using this system built during a difficult time, it will be easier to unlock the secrets of unknown infectious diseases that will threaten us in the future.
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