81% of international flights into NYC had SARS-CoV-2 in waste, small trial finds

In a small trial, plane wastewater proved straightforward and helpful for monitoring the SARS-CoV-2 variants touching down in the US, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Thursday.

The research discovered that the testing might be accomplished cheaply and simply; it solely added about three further minutes to plane upkeep instances at airports and did not require hassling passengers with nostril swabs or different sampling strategies. Moreover, the testing might be simply scaled up as wanted because the world largely abandons different SARS-CoV-2 testing and monitoring methods, the CDC authors concluded.

“This investigation demonstrated the feasibility of aircraft wastewater surveillance as a low-resource approach compared with individual testing to monitor SARS-CoV-2 variants without direct traveler involvement or disruption to airport operations,” the authors concluded.

The CDC performed the research in collaboration with biotech firm Ginkgo Bioworks. Together, they collected and examined wastewater samples from 80 flights into New York City’s John F. Kennedy International Airport between August 1 and September 9, 2022. All the flights had been international, originating from the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and France.

Overall, 65 airborne sewage samples from 80 flights (81 p.c) had been optimistic for SARS-CoV-2. The fee of optimistic samples was the identical among the many three nations: the Netherlands samples had been 81 p.c optimistic, with 22 of 27 samples optimistic; so was France, with 22 of 27 samples optimistic; as was the United Kingdom, with 21 of 26 samples optimistic.

The researchers had been in a position to get 27 genome sequences from 25 of the samples. All of the genomes revealed omicron sublineages, principally BA.5 in addition to BA.4.6 and BA.2.75.

The research provides to different proof that airport and plane wastewater surveillance can play a task in monitoring the unfold of pathogens, comparable to SARS-CoV-2. And it dovetails into bigger pandemic-era efforts by the CDC to mix wastewater sampling into its pathogen surveillance methods.

This has confirmed helpful in numerous locations across the nation for monitoring early surges of COVID-19 in addition to monitoring the unfold of polio in New York. In the case of SARS-CoV-2, viral shedding in feces can start very early in an an infection, doubtlessly earlier than an individual has signs.

There are limitations to the plane surveillance, of course. It shall be principally useful for longer flights, the place individuals are extra probably to make use of the bathroom. And it is unclear if all airways will conform to the sampling. Last, as a result of international vacationers can have numerous connecting flights earlier than arriving in the US, it may not be potential to trace the origin of variants that arrive in the US.

Still, the authors say the surveillance has its place. “In combination with traveler-based surveillance, aircraft wastewater monitoring can provide a complementary early warning system for the detection of SARS-CoV-2 variants and other pathogens of public health concern.”