Pilot project for corona detection in wastewater

Coro­n­avirus­es can be detect­ed in waste­water sev­er­al days before the first symp­toms appear. This offers the pos­si­bil­i­ty to col­lect case num­bers more quick­ly, to map the course of infec­tion more pre­cise­ly, and to detect new COVID-19 vari­ants and their spread ear­li­er. The project net­work “Sys­tem­at­ic Mon­i­tor­ing of SARS-CoV­‑2 in Waste­water” coor­di­nat­ed at the Karl­sruhe Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy (KIT) aims to exploit this poten­tial and to exam­ine whether and, if so, how a waste­water-based COVID-19 ear­ly warn­ing sys­tem can be imple­ment­ed in Ger­many. The Euro­pean Union is fund­ing the project with around 3.7 mil­lion euros.

“This inter­de­part­men­tal research project offers the oppor­tu­ni­ty to pool sci­en­tif­ic know-how and pre­vi­ous expe­ri­ence in waste­water mon­i­tor­ing across Ger­many and to sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly use it in the con­tain­ment of the COVID-19 pandemic.”

- Dr. Ver­e­na Höck­ele, Project Coor­di­na­tor at the Karl­sruhe Project Man­age­ment Agency

The pilot project, which start­ed in Feb­ru­ary and will run for one year, will suc­ces­sive­ly involve 20 loca­tions nation­wide. At these sites, mixed water sam­ples will be tak­en twice a week over a peri­od of 24 hours from the inflow of the waste­water treat­ment plants, processed and ana­lyzed using a PCR test. Sub­se­quent­ly, the results will be linked to pan­dem­ic data from local health depart­ments and, if pos­si­ble, incor­po­rat­ed into the pan­dem­ic sit­u­a­tion assessment.

Detect virus variants faster with wastewater monitoring

“The method of deter­min­ing the fre­quen­cy and dynam­ics of SARS-CoV­‑2 virus­es via munic­i­pal waste­water has already been suc­cess­ful­ly test­ed in Ger­many in the course of indi­vid­ual research projects,” says Pro­fes­sor Har­ald Horn, head of the Water Chem­istry and Water Tech­nol­o­gy depart­ment at the Engler-Bunte Insti­tute. Horn is con­vinced that it could not only help to bet­ter esti­mate the num­ber of unre­port­ed cas­es of infect­ed per­sons, but also to detect the spread of vari­ants and muta­tions more quick­ly than is pos­si­ble by test­ing indi­vid­ual persons.

In the project, the researchers now want to ana­lyze, on the basis of com­pa­ra­ble results, which meth­ods could be suit­able for area-wide mon­i­tor­ing and which data must be col­lect­ed for this pur­pose in order to be able to detect coro­n­avirus­es in com­plex waste­water. This is cur­rent­ly evi­dent in the detec­tion of the omi­cron vari­ant, whose virus frag­ments are pre­dom­i­nant­ly excret­ed via the upper res­pi­ra­to­ry tract and, com­pared to the delta vari­ant, only one-third of them enter waste­water. A par­tic­u­lar chal­lenge for the sci­en­tists is there­fore to fur­ther improve the qual­i­ty of sam­ple col­lec­tion, lab­o­ra­to­ry analy­sis and data evaluation.

At the end of the pilot phase, a deci­sion will be made as to whether nation­wide waste­water mon­i­tor­ing or rather rep­re­sen­ta­tive mon­i­tor­ing should be rec­om­mend­ed for Ger­many. Such a nation­wide ear­ly warn­ing sys­tem against COVID-19, which in per­spec­tive would also be suit­able for oth­er pathogens such as polio or influen­za virus­es, is already in use in the Nether­lands, Cana­da and Australia.

ESI-CorA: Funding and project partners

The project “Sys­tem­at­ic Sur­veil­lance of SARS-CoV­‑2 in Waste­water” (ESI-CorA) is fund­ed by the Euro­pean Union with­in the frame­work of the Emer­gency Sup­port Instru­ment (ESI) with approx­i­mate­ly 3.7 mil­lion euros. It was ini­ti­at­ed by the Fed­er­al Min­istry of Health, the Fed­er­al Min­istry for the Envi­ron­ment, Nature Con­ser­va­tion, Nuclear Safe­ty and Con­sumer Pro­tec­tion and the Fed­er­al Min­istry of Edu­ca­tion and Research. The Project Man­age­ment Agency Karl­sruhe (PTKA) at the Insti­tute coor­di­nates the project, and part­ners besides the Insti­tute are the Tech­ni­cal Uni­ver­si­ty of Darm­stadt, the Fed­er­al Envi­ron­ment Agency and the Robert Koch Insti­tute. A steer­ing com­mit­tee con­sist­ing of rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, the states and asso­ci­a­tions will decide on the con­tin­u­a­tion of the results after the end of the pilot project in Feb­ru­ary 2023. (sur)

As “The Research Uni­ver­si­ty in the Helmholtz Asso­ci­a­tion”, the Insti­tute cre­ates and com­mu­ni­cates knowl­edge for soci­ety and the envi­ron­ment. Its goal is to make sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions to glob­al chal­lenges in the fields of ener­gy, mobil­i­ty and infor­ma­tion. To this end, about 9,600 employ­ees coop­er­ate on a broad dis­ci­pli­nary basis in nat­ur­al sci­ences, engi­neer­ing, eco­nom­ics, and human­i­ties and social sci­ences. KIT pre­pares its 23,300 stu­dents for respon­si­ble tasks in soci­ety, indus­try, and sci­ence through research-ori­ent­ed uni­ver­si­ty stud­ies. Inno­va­tion activ­i­ties bridge the gap between knowl­edge and appli­ca­tion for the ben­e­fit of soci­ety, eco­nom­ic pros­per­i­ty, and the preser­va­tion of our nat­ur­al resources. KIT is one of the Ger­man uni­ver­si­ties of excellence.