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

[SheltieLover]

[link:https://nypost.com/2020/04/09/coronavirus-traces-found-in-massachusetts-wastewater/|

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Eric Alm, one of the authors of the study, which has not yet been peer reviewed, stressed that the public is not at risk of contracting the virus from particles in the wastewater, but they may have the potential to indicate how widespread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.

[tblue37]

1. With such limited testing, we know that confirmed case are just the tip of the iceberg. nt

[DeminPennswoods]

2. Not sure this proves anything since

there are many people with cv19 who are being treated at home. They are all washing hands, taking showers, doing laundry, etc, in addition to normal bodily functions.

It's interesting data, though.

What would be more helpful is if all the blood stored in blood banks was tested for cv19 anti-bodies. Presumably the donors were deemed healthy enough to contribute blood. That would give a much better idea of the rate of "asymptomatic" people.

[SunSeeker]

3. Could you get Covid-19 from a blood transfusion?

[DeminPennswoods]

4. Haven't heard or read any reports this could happen,

so I would say no. I'm sure the blood is screened for disease. Theoretically, you might get cv19 anti-bodies, though, but no proof of that either.

I honestly don't know why the blood banks are not testing for anti-bodies since there is so much undocumented speculation about spread from "asymptomatic" individuals. There must be thousands of samples at all the blood banks that could be tested and in turn give real data about the extent of "asymptomatic" spread.

[Rstrstx]

5. This might interest you

https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/7/20-0839_article

[DeminPennswoods]

7. It did, thank you

Correct me if I've got the estimation wrong, but it appears China found 4 cases of asymptomatic individuals out of 4000+ blood and plasma samples.

Also interesting were the individuals with low levels of the virus that developed mild symptoms. I am not a scientist, but it makes me think a vaccine centered around a small live or dead virus injection would provide immunity as it did with polio.

My question remains whether or not we are doing this kind of screening here in US.

[Hortensis]

6. Hmmm. If there ARE many more undiagnosed nonpatients than

realized, perhaps that suggests more people are quietly developing immunity than previously estimated.

[DeminPennswoods]

8. Or possibly it takes a lot of the virus to make

one have the worst symptoms.

I'm not a believer yet, but I really wonder if cv19 has been around a lot longer than we realize and has been mixed in with garden variety flu for months. That people have gotten sick, recovered and thought they just had a bout of flu. There haven't been specific, unique symptoms that identify cv19 from regular flu, or even allergies, except difficulty breathing or low blood oxygen levels, but even that doesn't happen all the time either.

[Hortensis]

9. Another possibly, possibly? :)

I suspect the other's unlikely. This novel virus and its manifestations are very distinctive to communicable disease experts. The U.S. is one of nearly 200 nations that continually monitor the planet for new diseases and outbreaks of already identified ones. They were trying to get virus samples out of China for study long before China admitted a problem.

[MerryBlooms]

10. Rec. I think viral load and prolonged repeated exposure make a big difference in severity.

[DeminPennswoods]

11. That is exactly what this article from the New Yorkers

posits: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/04/06/how-does-the-coronavirus-behave-inside-a-patient. Definately worth reading the entire relatively short article.

But three questions deserve particular attention, because their answers could change the way we isolate, treat, and manage patients. First, what can we learn about the “dose-response curve” for the initial infection—that is, can we quantify the increase in the risk of infection as people are exposed to higher doses of the virus? Second, is there a relationship between that initial “dose” of virus and the severity of the disease—that is, does more exposure result in graver illness? And, third, are there quantitative measures of how the virus behaves in infected patients (e.g., the peak of your body’s viral load, the patterns of its rise and fall) that predict the severity of their illness and how infectious they are to others? So far, in the early phases of the COVID-19 pandemic, we have been measuring the spread of the virus across people. As the pace of the pandemic escalates, we also need to start measuring the virus within people.

Most epidemiologists, given the paucity of data, have been forced to model the spread of the new coronavirus as if it were a binary phenomenon: individuals are either exposed or unexposed, infected or uninfected, symptomatic patients or asymptomatic carriers. ...

This was a bird’s-eye view of a virus radiating through a population, seen as an “on-off” phenomenon. The doctor and medical researcher in me—as a graduate student, I was trained in viral immunology—wanted to know what was going on within the dots. How much virus was in that red dot? How fast was it replicating in this dot? How was the exposure—the “touch time”—related to the chance of transmission? How long did a red dot remain red—that is, how did an individual’s infectiousness change over time? And what was the severity of disease in each case?

[MerryBlooms]

12. A friend and I were talking about this a few weeks ago.

We all know there are way more cases and cases recovered than have been recorded, so I'm hoping we'll be able to call our docs soon for an antibody test with no questions asked. In a perfect world, it would just be an auto screen just like with every other regular blood draw.