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Coronavirus China
ChinaScience

China orders Covid-19 waste water watch in cities to track variants as cases surge

  • ‘Sewage surveillance’ appears on China’s national Covid-19 directives for the first time as last of zero-Covid curbs are lifted
  • As many as 130 sub-lineages of the Omicron variant have been detected in China in the past three months

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Medical workers receive patients arriving in ambulances at a hospital in Suining, in southwestern China’s Sichuan province. Photo: AP
Hayley Wong
China has finally caught up with monitoring waste water as an early warning system for the coronavirus, a practice followed by some countries since the early stages of the pandemic.
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“Sewage surveillance” – a technique piloted in megacities such as Beijing and Shenzhen – appeared on China’s national Covid-19 directives for the first time as central authorities issued a new list of monitoring strategies last week.

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Chinese man wears ‘tent’ to shield himself from Covid

Chinese man wears ‘tent’ to shield himself from Covid
The directives urged local governments to test waste water from households flowing into water treatment plants, as China prepares for management of the disease to be downgraded from class A to Class B on Sunday in a transition from zero-Covid to living with the virus.

The data would indicate community infection levels and the dynamic distribution of variants of particular concern, boosting pandemic preparation and the planning of a targeted response, experts said.

This came as a task force of the State Council, China’s cabinet, said sewage surveillance in cities with suitable conditions would be started on an “explorative” basis.

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Local governments should track changes in positive case rates and viral loads, and conduct genomic sequencing as important indicators of new waves and variants, it said.

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