Australian researchers have achieved the first step in developing an early warning surveillance system to track COVID-19 prevalence in the community through tracing the presence of the novel coronavirus gene in raw sewage, Australia's national science agency, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO), announced early Thursday, following similar studies in the Netherlands, the U.S, and Sweden.

Researchers from the University of Queensland (UQ) and CSIRO have successfully demonstrated the presence of SARS-CoV-2, the virus which leads to the disease COVID-19, in Australian untreated wastewater, a joint media release stated.

A proof of concept study was completed last week, using sewage samples from two wastewater treatment plants in South East Queensland, representing populations living in the Brisbane region. The researchers from the UQ and CSIRO found RNA (ribonucleic acid) fragments of SARS-CoV-2 in untreated sewage which would have been shed in the wastewater stream by coronavirus-infected people.

Director of UQ's Queensland Alliance for Environmental Health Sciences, Professor Kevin Thomas, said the validated method built on work by research groups in the Netherlands and the U.S. "This is a major development that enables surveillance of the spread of the virus through Australian communities," he said.

CSIRO Chief Executive, Dr Larry Marshall stressed that the testing would help Australia's efforts in containing COVID-19. "The hope is eventually we will be able to not just detect the geographic regions where COVID-19 is present, but the approximate number of people infected – without testing every individual in a location. This will give the public a better sense of how well we are containing this pandemic," he explained.

Welcoming the announcement, Australia's federal Health Minister Greg Hunt said that the COVID-19 wastewater surveillance pilot is extremely encouraging and has the potential to further strengthen Australia's response to the global pandemic.

"A national program based on this work could add to the broader suite of measures our government can use in the identification and containment of COVID-19," he added.

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CSIRO Land and Water Science Director Dr Paul Bertsch underlined that the data from sewage tracing will be particularly useful for catchments with vulnerable populations where testing using other methods may not be feasible. "An early warning detection system like this would also be incredibly useful for monitoring and response in the recovery phase," Dr Bertsch added.

The researchers are keen to share the new knowledge and methods to develop a national collaboration.

"By showing how the method has worked in Australia, it is hoped that this research will bring together a national collaboration of government authorities, wastewater utilities, universities and other research organisations and commercial laboratories," Thomas said. "The next step is to build the capacity to deliver a national program."

Thomas said the research used systematic sampling and analysis of wastewater for SARS-CoV-2 using a standardized, coordinated approach based on refined analytical methods. "The wastewater samples were analysed for specific nucleic acid fragments of the virus using RT-PCR analysis, which is used to identify a gene fragment from SARS-CoV-2," he elaborated. "The presence of SARS-CoV-2 in specific wastewater samples was then confirmed using sequencing techniques," he added.

Similar studies are being pursued in many other countries with researchers so far successfully detecting traces of the coronavirus in the Netherlands, the U.S. and Sweden. Last month, scientists in the Netherlands reported that they were able to find the coronavirus in a city's sewage before COVID-19 cases were reported in a sign that an early warning system could be feasible through sewage surveillance.