It may not feel like it when you’re swabbing your throat, but improving how we test for diseases is one of the big positives of COVID. Applying methods developed for COVID to other diseases could revolutionise how we detect the causes of disease over the next decade.
When thinking of COVID testing, lateral flow and PCR tests spring to mind. However, there’s one other, lesser-known advance that’s remained quite literally underground – testing human sewage to monitor the spread and prevalence of COVID across the UK.
When we become infected with COVID, we all shed the virus in respiratory droplets. However, at least half of people are expected to shed the virus in their faeces too. Although not infectious, the coronavirus’s genetic material can be detected in sewage, allowing many countries to supplement their testing programmes with wastewater monitoring.
