By Emilio Parodi

MILAN, Reuters – Italy’s sewage will be used to forecast future coronavirus epidemics. It also serves to notify authorities about rising infections and other variants in order to prevent them from appearing in tests and hospitals. A senior official revealed that the project would launch in the next few months.

This new tool is being developed by governments as they seek new methods to detect the virus and inform their public health policies. They will also decide whether to adopt unpopular measures such as restrictions to disrupt individuals’ lives.

This could be helpful in light of concerns over a shortage of labs and testing equipment as Omicron spreads around the globe. Like many other countries, Italy is seeing surging https://graphics.reuters.com/world-coronavirus-tracker-and-maps/countries-and-territories/italy cases.

Giuseppina Rosa, co-head for wastewater monitoring at the National Health Institute, said this week that the tool would provide early warnings of future infections and identify the incidence and presence of various variants.

She stated that she believed it would be finished in two to three months.

Numerous countries, such as Canada and the Netherlands, have been keeping an eye on coronavirus contamination of wastewater from the beginning stages of the pandemic. Global Water Pathogen Project has a COVIDPoops19 global database.

It is difficult to develop predictive models for wastewater because they must take into consideration so many variables including rainfall changing the contents of waste water. Luca Lucentini (director of Water Quality at ISS) told Reuters.

La Rosa explained that the great benefit of sewage surveillance is its ability to photograph the base and entire population of the pyramid. While epidemiological surveillance is limited to those who have been swabbed it only covers the top.

It has 166 sampling stations throughout Italy as well as 60 labs. The program samples cities of more than 100,000 inhabitants twice weekly, while towns with at least 50,000 people are tested once per week.

    “When these models are ready in a short time, however, we will be able to intercept the trend in advance and to provide useful data for deciding on health policy measures to be taken,” La Rosa added.

    This type of environmental screening may also identify less common variants that may escape surveillance through swabs, she said.

    “Another thing we will definitely do is to go and re-screen the older samples we have in the archive, to see for example when Omicron actually arrived in Italy,” La Rosa added.

    In 2020 the ISS showed the presence of the coronavirus in the wastewater of Milan and Turin in December 2019, which was around the time that China first alerted the world to the virus and which showed a much earlier arrival in Italy than previously thought.