PARIS : Since the beginning of the epidemic, researchers across the world have been tracing the spread of the coronavirus through waste water and sewage.
From the first outbreak in China, several scientific studies have picked up the clear presence of COVID-19 in patients' stools.
Testing human sewage could now become a key way of tracking the pandemic's spread — and a precious early warning system for a feared second wave.
Researchers have found genetic traces of Sars-Cov-2 — as the virus is officially known— in waste water in toilets, sewers and sewage farms from Brisbane to Paris and Amsterdam.