{"id":3519,"date":"2023-05-09T19:31:33","date_gmt":"2023-05-10T00:31:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=3519"},"modified":"2023-05-09T19:31:36","modified_gmt":"2023-05-10T00:31:36","slug":"sfo-becomes-first-us-airport-to-formally-launch-airplane-wastewater-testing-for-emerging-covid-19-variants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2023\/05\/09\/sfo-becomes-first-us-airport-to-formally-launch-airplane-wastewater-testing-for-emerging-covid-19-variants\/","title":{"rendered":"SFO becomes first US airport to formally launch airplane wastewater testing for emerging Covid-19 variants"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

CNN<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

San Francisco International Airport has launched a program with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to test wastewater from airplanes for traces of emerging coronavirus variants. Traces of the virus that causes Covid-19 can be detected in people\u2019s feces when they are infected, even if they don\u2019t have symptoms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The airport\u00a0announced<\/a>\u00a0Tuesday that the CDC\u2019s partner Concentric by Ginkgo, the biosecurity and public health unit of Boston-based synthetic biology company Ginkgo Bioworks, has installed an automatic device that will regularly collect wastewater samples from various international flights arriving at SFO. Those combined samples of wastewater then will be sent to laboratories for testing.\u201cAs we know from the COVID-19 pandemic, pathogens can spread quickly across the globe, impacting travel and trade,\u201d Dr. Cindy Friedman, chief of the CDC\u2019s Travelers\u2019 Health Branch, said in a news release Tuesday. \u201cTesting of airplane wastewater can provide early detection of new COVID-19 variants and other pathogens that can cause outbreaks and pandemics. CDC appreciates the collaboration with SFO to further enhance these efforts.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

SFO will be the first airport to launch this pilot program with the CDC, Airport Director Ivar Satero said in the announcement. The airport also has been involved in supplying wastewater samples to the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center to help identify emerging coronavirus variants, but those samples were taken from the airport\u2019s wastewater treatment plant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Testing aircraft wastewater involves collecting sewage from individual commercial passenger planes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou can pull it off the airplane in under two minutes, quickly put it into a lab network, which we manage all of that,\u201d Matt McKnight, general manager at Ginkgo Bioworks, told CNN in January.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once those wastewater samples arrive at a diagnostic lab for testing, scientists scan them for traces of known or unknown viruses, such as emerging variants of SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes Covid-19. When samples test positive for the virus, scientists conduct genome sequencing \u2013 which usually takes about five to seven days \u2013 to identify exactly which variant that virus is. Then, scientists may analyze their results and submit their findings to the CDC.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Monitoring sewage for traces of coronavirus variants is a \u201cvalidated\u201d scientific process \u2013 no longer in its pilot phase \u2013 and airplanes are a logical next step, McKnight said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CNN San Francisco International Airport has launched a program with the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to test wastewater from airplanes for traces of emerging coronavirus variants. Traces of the virus that causes Covid-19 can be detected in people\u2019s feces when they are infected, even if they don\u2019t have symptoms. The airport\u00a0announced\u00a0Tuesday that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":false,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science-and-tech"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3519"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3519\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3520,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3519\/revisions\/3520"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}