Imperial College London

Academic Institute

Till Hoffmann

eDRIS-2021-0241

COVID-19 is a serious disease caused by a virus called SARS-CoV-2. To protect communities, we need to find out how many people have this virus, and who they might infect. Most people get tested when they start to feel ill. However, some people never feel ill when they’re infected with the virus. But they can pass it on to their families without knowing. We’re developing new ways to identify how many people have the virus but don’t have symptoms, so we can protect communities. Fortunately, traces of the genetic material of the virus can be found in the poo of everyone who is infected, even if they don’t feel ill. The poo travels through the sewerage network to sewage treatment centres in your local area. Here, samples of the sewage are taken to measure the amount of genetic material it contains. This allows us to estimate how many people in the community are infected. We want our estimates to be as accurate as possible. We therefore need to compare them with information from local hospitals to understand how many people get sick and need medical help. We will collect the information needed for the comparisons in this project. In the end, it will allow us to use the sewage measurements to predict whether hospitals will get busy and need extra help to keep the community safe. Source: Public Benefit and Privacy Panel for Health and Social Care

31/03/2021

Release