Category: Detection

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Coronavirus detected on particles of air pollution

 

Researchers in Italy have found that coronavirus was detected on particles of air pollution. The researchers collected outdoor air pollution samples at both urban and industrial sites in the Bergamo province in Italy. They identified a gene specific to COVID-19 in several samples, according to the outlet. The study has not yet been peer reviewed, and it does not determine whether the virus on pollution particles is in quantities sufficient enough to cause the disease in humans.

The samples were confirmed in an independent laboratory by blind testing, according to the Guardian.

Leonardo Setti, a researcher from the University of Bologna who led the study, told outlet that it is the lack of information about how the disease could be carrier by pollutants.“I am a scientist and I am worried when I don’t know,” he said. “If we know, we can find a solution. But if we don’t know, we can only suffer the consequences.” The team led by Setti suggests that a higher level of particle pollution in the air could explain why there were greater rates of infection in Northern Italy when coronavirus first hit the country. If the virus was able to grab on to pollution particles, it could suggest that highly polluted areas could be more susceptible to transmit the disease. According to The Guardian, two other research groups have suggested that pollution particles could help the virus travel further. The northern part of the country is one of the most polluted areas of Europe. Professor Jonathan Reid of Bristol University in the United Kingdom, who is also researching airborne transmission of the coronavirus, told the Guardian that, “It is perhaps not surprising that while suspended in air, the small droplets could combine with background urban particles and be carried around.” A study by researchers from the National Institute of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Princeton University and UCLA has found that coronavirus can stay viable in the air for up to three hours when the virus becomes suspended in droplets after someone coughs or sneezes. In the same study, researchers found that on surfaces such as plastic and stainless steel, the virus survived for up to two or three days. However, the researchers noted that the virus’s ability to infect people diminishes over time.

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Coronavirus traces found in Massachusetts wastewater at levels far higher than expected

Coronavirus was detected in Massachusetts sewage at higher levels than expected, suggesting there are many more undiagnosed patients than previously known, according to a new study. Researchers from biotech startup Biobot Analytics collected samples from a wastewater facility for an unnamed metropolitan area in late March, according to a report Tuesday on medRxiv. Eric Alm, one of the authors of the study, which has not yet been peer reviewed, stressed that the public is not at risk of contracting the virus from particles in the wastewater, but they may have the potential to indicate how widespread the virus has become, Newsweek reported. “Even if those viral particles are no longer active or capable of infecting humans, they may still carry genetic material that can be detected using an approach called PCR (polymerase chain reaction), which amplifies the genetic signal many orders of magnitude, creating billions of copies of the genome for each starting virus,” Alm told the outlet.

The researchers, along with a team from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard, and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, analyzed the samples and found the number of coronavirus particles equated with 2,300 people being infected with the virus.The researchers shared their findings with local health officials, who said it was plausible there were hundreds of undetected cases. “They could believe that [our] numbers could be correct and not out of the realm of possibility,” Matus told the outlet.

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Antibody tests key to ending COVID-19 lockdowns

Paris (AFP) – It’s the key that opens to door from total lockdown: serologic testing, which will show definitively who has contracted COVID-19 and is in theory safe to return to work. “Everyone’s waiting for serologic testing, the whole world,” said France’s Health Minister Olivier Veran. He said that the global research community was focussing on ways of perfecting the tests, which measure viral antibodies in a person’s blood that signal immunity. Veran said that mass production of the tests could start within weeks. “It’s a huge factor, especially when we’re trying to reduce confinement,” he said. The World Health Organization said that serologic tests were still being developed but were yet to be properly evaluated. Current diagnostic tests, known as RT-PCR, are invasive and use genetic analysis to see if a person is actively infected. Serologic testing, which only requires a drop of blood to conduct, focuses instead on finding virus antibodies, the presence of which indicates that an individual has had COVID-19 and is now likely immune.

“Antibodies are one of the key immune response components. They start to be detectable around a week after initial infection,” said Andrew Preston, a reader in Microbial Pathogenesis at the University of Bath.

There are two types of antibodies associated with the COVID-19 immune response: IgM, which the body produces in the early stages of viral response, and IgG, which arrive later on during infection. The tests being developed can identify both antibodies, key hallmarks of a patient’s auto-immune response to the virus. “Thus there is great interest in the use of an antibody test to indicate immunity against disease for use in the lifting of lockdown restrictions,” said Preston. Antibody testing is so crucial because of the large proportion of people with COVID-19 infections who may not show symptoms but can still pass the virus on to others. Such tests already exist for other illnesses. And once they are perfected for the novel coronavirus the results can be analysed in labs using existing hardware.