A new research program from NSW Health and Sydney Water has detected remnants of the COVID-19 virus in raw sewage across Sydney.
NSW Chief Health Officer Kerry Chant said sewage testing for molecular markers of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, started in July.
“This is early days for this research, and we have a lot of work to do analysing our findings, but it’s one more way we can strengthen our fight against COVID-19,” Dr Chant said.
“This is a program that will show us where COVID-19 has been,” she said.
“For instance, we would expect to see viral fragments in Sydney sewage where we have consistently had cases in the community or in hotel quarantine.”
Dr Chant said that if NSW continued to have very few active cases, there was scope for the testing to act as an early warning system for areas where there were no known cases of the virus.
She said Sydney Water laboratories had commenced testing raw sewage about two weeks ago from plants at Bondi, Malabar, North Head, Cronulla, St Marys, Quakers Hill, Rouse Hill, Penrith, Shellharbour and Winmalee in the Blue Mountains.
She said the first round of samples found positive results at Bondi, Malabar, and Winmalee.
“Further sampling and analysis are required to assess the significance of this initial positive result,” Dr Chant said.
