Welcome to Prognosis. I'm Laura Carlson. It's day thirty since coronavirus was declared a global pandemic. Our main story scientists need to find out where the novel coronavirus is spreading in order to have any hope of containing it. So far, a lot of the strategies to detect community spread have focused on widespread testing, but a group of environmental scientists has discovered another potentially effective way to trace the virus by hunting in sewers. But first, here's what happened today.
A message about the virus is emerging from many corners of the world social distancing works. Some countries are showing early signs of flattening the curve, keeping infections from rising to a sharp peak. That has encouraged some European countries and the White House to start making plans to reopen the economy. But health officials are clear, if we're seeing fewer infections than we thought, it's because of lockdown measures, and it's still too early to let our guard down.
In the US, top infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci predicted the country will see half the number of deaths than some of the most dire predictions had shown. That's still a staggering sixty thousand deaths just over a week ago, though the White House had suggested as many as two hundred and forty thousand could die as a result of the outbreak. In another sign there might be light at the end of the tunnel, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said Thursday that there had only been two hundred new
hospitalizations over twenty four hours. That number had been as high as fourteen hun tread just a week ago. Likewise, the rate of new intensive care admissions and intubations where patients are put on a ventilator, also plummeted. Meanwhile, the outbreak continues to take its grim toll on the economy. Six point six million people applied for unemployment benefits last week. It's the third straight week of jobless claims hitting previously
unthinkable levels. To ease some of the economic pain, the Federal Reserve took another series of sweeping steps to pump up to two point three trillion dollars into the economy. Some of that aid comes in the form of programs for small and mid sized businesses, as well as state and local governments. The FED also took the unprecedented step of pledging to buy up low grade and risky debt. Now for today's May story, there's overwhelming demand to test
people for the coronavirus. That's not just so we can treat the sick. Scientists are desperate for a way to detect the virus early, since we now know that the novel coronavirus can be spread by people well before they show symptoms. The earlier we can locate the virus and communities, the better our chances for containing the pandemic. Amid all of this, environmental scientists may have discovered a way to tell where the virus is spreading, and it's right beneath
their feet. Jason Gale looks at how Dutch researchers found an early warning sign of the novel coronavirus in sewage. It turns out sewers carry a vat reservoir of information on human health and behavior and potentially coronavirus. Here's Jason, Well, we think of COVID nineteen. It's pneumonia we worry most about, but the coronavirus that causes it can also attack the gastro intestinal tracts and lead to diarrhea. It's why the virus is often found in fegal matter and on rectal
swabs of infected people. It's also why in the Netherlands, scientists went looking for the virus in sewage. They collected samples from wastewater treatment plants in seven cities and an airport in early February, a few weeks before the country's first COVID nineteen case. It's an unusual surveillance strategy, but a similar approach has been used to track poliovirus for years, and it turned out to be a smart move for
Dutch researchers. Traces of the coronavirus were found in the sewage of a city called Amosport, about thirty two miles southeast of Amsterdam. Importantly, the detection occurred almost a week before the city reported its first COVID nineteen patient. That finding gave doctors advanced warning that the pandemic causing disease was circulating and that they should be on the lookout
for possible cases among patients. Coronavirus is often excreted by an infected person from their coughs, sneezes, and breath, as well as their stool. Days before they're sick enough to see a doctor, and many people, especially younger than fifty, aren't all that sick even when they're transmitting the virus to others. It's why the COVID nineteen pandemic has been so hard to stop. So Professor Gertian Maidemar and colleagues at the KWR Water Research Institute in the Netherlands started
their sewage surveillance experiment. The first response to the virus was trying to to find cases and to to quarantine, to to to isolate them, and to try and isolate the virus and advirus transmission in people that are having only mild symptoms. This one is much more difficult to control. So but yeah, then sewich evaliance can add to m to the picture that we get off this virus circulation and could also be an early warning. Go chan is
the Water Institute's principal micro biologist. He's been studying wastewater for thirty years. I knew that detecting the coronavirus and sewage could augment conventional disease surveillance that public health officials do, but there were no guarantees of actually finding it. G Chon says sewers aren't exactly a friendly environment for some viruses, and there was a chance that coronavirus would be so degraded by the time it got to treatment plants that
its genetic material couldn't be detected. Fortunately, that wasn't the case, and it's inspired other research groups. Last Friday, a report in the journal Nature said that more than a dozen research groups worldwide have started analyze ways what for the new coronavirus. It may help gauge the total number of infections in a community. There's a huge interest and many groups around the world are working more. It's starting to work on it, have reached out to us, have started initiatives.
So it's a it's super interesting to see that there's so much interested for this developed so will I'm sure that will get to a point where we see that
sewage eveillance is is practiced. Gown says. The next steps are to confirm the testing approaches, expand the number of testing sites, and to compare the wastewater data with the clinical information gathered from results of testing patient nose and throat swaps, so that you can for instant see whether trends in virus concentrations and occurrence in stew which match
trends that you see in the in the population. And after the epidemic subsides again, we may use it as a tool to monitor if the virus re emerges or if it's in It could also help in countries with more limited resources as a as a tool to to do surveillance in the of the virus circulation in the population. But what about the next pandemic. I think this is going to be part of the of the future. Door.
Jose Antonio Baslomba as a researcher in the Department of Environmental Chemistry and Technology with the Norwegian Institute of Water Research.
He's been doing sewage based epidemiology for more than eight years and envisages a future when individuals might be using their smartphones and other personal devices to monitor their bodily waste for signs of infection and disease, and then this information may be connected to your country platform just to to monitor spikes of viruses or pandemics or something like that. I think this is going to accelerate. Maybe I don't know.
We will fly like three or four or five years just in a couple of months, which is good for us. As the COVID nineteen pandemic continues to spread, ratchening up the tragic loss of life and economic devastation. Some signs of hope are emerging science and technology might enable humanity to be better prepared for other emerging pathogens and perhaps even snap out potential contagions before they even begin. That was Jason Gale reporting from Melbourne, and that's it for
the Prognosis Daily Edition. For more on the pandemic from our bureaus around the world, visit Bloomberg dot com, slash Coronavirus and One Small favor. If you like what we're doing, please take a second to rate the podcast and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It helps more listeners find our global reporting. The Prognosis Daily Edition is hosted by me Laura Carlson. The show is produced by Me Tophor foreheads Jordan Gaspoure and Magnus Hendrickson. Today's
main story was reported by Jason Gale. Original music by Leo sedri Our editors are Francesco Levi and Rick Shine. Francesco Levi is Bloomberg's head of Podcasts. Thanks for listening.