INSACOG plans to increase sites for sewage sample collection for COVID-19, say top health experts

By Shalini Bhardwaj
New Delhi [India], April 11 (ANI): The Indian SARS Cov2 genomic consortium (INSACOG) is looking into the results of samples collected from 15 states and 19 sewage sites for COVID-19 and plans to increase more sites for sewage sample collection, said NTAGI Chairman Dr N K Arora on Monday.
"We are already looking at the results. The results are being viewed for the last two weeks and almost 15 states have at least one site or so. We are going to further streamline it in the coming weeks or a month or so," said Dr Arora.
INSACOG is further going to increase the sites for the sewage sample collection, "We'll try to see just like polio, we have over 50 sites similarly for COVID-19, we will increase the number of sites so that the whole country is represented in that," said Dr Arora.
Dr Arora explained about the sewage sample collection, "we have started analysing the gutter fluid for viruses despite the number of fewer cases, if there is any new variant coming up, it will be picked up from that because a lot of patients, a lot of people are asymptomatic, but they excrete the virus into the country."
Earlier many scientists recommended environmental surveillance as an important indicator for the virus, Dr Priya Abraham, Director, ICMR-NIV, Pune to ANI said, "One environmental surveillance which people are doing is actually the sewage water sampling, which is like an indirect indicator that a particular area from where that sewage water is being drained from still has COVID-19 activity. So that's one way to do environmental monitoring or surveillance." (ANI)