Identifying COVID-19 variants in wastewater from planes arriving at Vancouver airport like assembling a 'jigsaw puzzle,' expert says
with community wastewater at Metro Vancouver’s Iona treatment plant, two new projects beginning this month aim to provide a clearer picture of what’s happening at Canada’s international borders.Start your day with a roundup of B.C.-focused news and opinion delivered straight to your inbox at 7 a.m., Monday to Friday.By clicking on the sign up button you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc.
In both cases, scientists will run wastewater through a conventional test to determine the presence of the COVID virus before sequencing the genome to identify known variants and possible new mutations, said Poliquin. They will then examine both the “pool” data from the entire airport, as well as the samples from specific planes, to get a picture of what is circulating and how it’s behaving.
But while the puzzle was relatively easy at the start of the project when there was a very small number of variants circulating, it has become much more challenging over the last year, he said. Wastewater testing is most powerful in combination with clinical testing and communication and information-sharing with scientists around the world to understand variants, he said.
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