More Coronavirus Particles Detected than Expected in Wastewater in the USA: What Does It Mean?

Traces of coronavirus have been detected in wastewater from Massachusetts at higher levels than scientists suspected. Writes about this New York Post.

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According to a new study, coronavirus was found in Massachusetts wastewater at higher levels than expected, suggesting that the number of patients with an undelivered diagnosis is much larger than previously known.

Researchers at Biobot Analytics, a biotechnology startup, have collected samples from wastewater in a metropolis in late March.

Eric Alm, one of the authors of the study, which has not yet been subjected to expert evaluation, emphasized that the public does not risk getting the virus from particles in wastewater, but they may be able to indicate how widespread the virus is.

“Even if these virus particles are no longer active or capable of infecting people, they may still carry genetic material that can be detected using an approach called PCR (polymerase chain reaction), which amplifies the genetic signal by many orders of magnitude, creating billions of copies of the genome for each original virus,” Alm said.

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Researchers, along with a team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard and Brigham, analyzed the samples and found that the number of particles of coronavirus is at a level if 2 people were infected.

But during trials in the region, there were only 446 confirmed cases, according to the study.

“What’s interesting is that our estimate was definitely higher than the number of confirmed cases,” said Mariana Matus, CEO and co-founder of Biobot.

Researchers shared their findings with local health officials who said there were probably hundreds of undetected cases.

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