Utility Week

UTILITY WEEK | FEBRUARY 2022 | 35 Analysis We are detective Veolia and its project partners have built Vigie Covid-19 to monitor levels and variants of Covid in wastewater, providing an early warning system that could be expanded to cover other pathogens. I n the latter stages of 2021, waste manage- ment and energy firm Veolia announced that its Vigie Covid-19 project to detect and quantify the presence of SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater had been upgraded to track signs of the Omicron variant. Launched in September 2020, and acting as an early warning system for monitoring the pandemic's progression, Vigie Covid-19 had previously tracked the Alpha, Beta and Gamma variants before cracking Delta in summer 2021. Used to complement clinical data, testing for the presence of Covid in wastewater has the potential to become an important indica- tor and help manage the pandemic, accord- ing to Veolia. Harnessing polymerase chain reaction (PCR) screening techniques like those used in coronavirus lab testing, the project identi- fies the presence of known mutations origi- nating from existing variants and evaluates their concentration. Sequencing then iden- tifies mutations, as well as each variant's proportions. Created in tandem with the Institute of Molecular and Cellular Pharmacology (IPMC) – a joint research unit between the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and Université Côte d'Azur – biological analysis start-up IAGE and the Marseille Naval Fire Battalion (BMPM), Vigie Covid-19 is already in use at a dozen sites across several Euro- pean countries and could yet be rolled out further. Having updated the system to track the Omicron variant in December, Philippe Sébé- rac, Veolia's technological and scientific expertise director, believes the solution is ready to be made more widely available. "A large-scale rollout would make it pos- sible, by tightening up the territorial net- work, to cross-reference data with those of local health authorities," he explains. "Our method can constitute an excellent complement to clinical trials in the fight against the spread of the pandemic by pro- viding readable information and dynamics consistent with the incidence rates reported by health authorities in Europe." How does the system work? Speaking to Utility Week Innovate, Sébérac explains that the Veolia-led collaboration sees wastewater samples collected and sent to start-up IAGE for PCR screening, before being passed to the CNRS-IPMC for sequencing. "In the context of the variant soup found in wastewater for several months, wastewa- ter sample sequencing is used at the R&D level to regularly check for marker consist- ency," he says. "Sequencing provides a reliable confir- mation of the identity of the variants. The Omicron variant, like any other variant of concern, is searched by PCR screening." Though the virus in wastewater is unlikely to be active nor alive, any traces found offer warning of its presence. Keeping pace with new variants At the time of writing, five strains of Covid- 19 are listed as global "variants of concern" by the World Health Organisation (WHO). Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta – the domi- nant strain in the UK, Europe and the United States – as well as Omicron, which has been detected in more than 100 countries since emerging in November 2021 and has accel- erated infection rates due to its increased transmissibility. On top of these, the WHO lists two "vari- ants of interest". Lamda, first detected in Peru in December 2020, and Mu, first detected in Colombia in January 2021, as well as monitoring three further strains of the virus first recorded in January, May and Sep- tember 2021 and having relegated a further 17 strains deemed no longer of concern a£er failing to circulate to any worrying extent. Though the number of new variants is ever changing, according to Sébérac the contributors to Vigie Covid-19 are part of a "scientific ecosystem" that enables them to develop protocols for quantifying new vari- ants very quickly. "Only two weeks are needed to launch a monitoring campaign for a new variant and the results can be used as soon as the new variant arises in the region," he explains. "Only a few changes are made to detect the Omicron variant as the operation and deployment of the solution remains the same for each variant." Broader innovation Additionally, Sébérac forecasts that these processes and the technology used to detect Covid-19 variants in wastewater could lay the foundations for further innovation in waste- water treatment. "The Covid-19 pandemic confirmed the importance of wastewater monitoring in pro- viding authorities with a cost-effective, fast and reliable source of information on the health of populations connected to wastewa- ter systems," he tells Utility Week Innovate. "Based on the lessons learnt for sampling and analytical strategy from SARS-CoV-2, wastewater-based epidemiology could be used as a support to clinical data to detect other biological and chemical markers of health and environmental interest such as waterborne pathogens, antimicrobial resist- ance markers and antimicrobial substances." Stuart Stone, editor, UW Innovate Testing times: samples are PCR tested to detect the presence of Covid, and identify its type

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