Imperial College London

Academic Institute

2001398

COVID_19 is a serious disease caused by the SARS-COV-2 virus. 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 are infected with the virus. But they can pass it on to their families without knowing. We are developing new ways to identify how many people have the virus but don't have any symptoms, se we can protect communities. Fortunately, fragments 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 sewerage measurements to predict whether hospitals will get busy and need extra help to keep the community safe.

UKSubject to satisfactory statistical disclosure checks, the summary statistics at the level of wastewater treatment plants will be made available to research groups, government departments, and citizen scientists for wastewater­based epidemiology. Datasets will be disseminated via the Heath Data Research Innovation Gateway (http://healthdatagateway.org) which provides an access hub for health data in the context of the COVID­19 response. The data will allow us, other research groups, government, and interested citizen scientists to develop and calibrate wastewater­based epidemiological models. Well­calibrated models should allow us to infer disease incidence and predict healthcare needs so resources can be better allocated.We want to ensure that members of the public are involved in our research. We aim to do this by conducting a small public engagement study to understand attitudes and perceptions regarding the use of healthcare data combined with measuring genetic traces of the virus in poo at sewage treatment works. This will involve working together with 4 focus groups to gain a better idea of the current level of knowledge regarding wastewater­based epidemiology and where a greater understanding would be beneficial to improve public communication. The recommendations from the focus group discussions will be used to inform the development of an information resource to communicate the aims of the research project in a clear and accessible manner to members of the general public.

10/05/2022