A Biochemist scientist has urged the government to consider quarantining the recovered coronavirus patients for at least 21 days since there is evidence that they continue shedding the virus through stools for quite some time, hence they are inadvertently likely to infect their families and community.
Dr. Meshack Obonyo said researchers from Biobiotic analytics and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have discovered a high presence of the novel coronavirus in the state’s sewerage treatment facility, which provides proof that the recovered patients were still a danger to others.
However, he said the new discovery was positive since it makes it possible for scientists to know faster areas where people are already infected without mass testing, which is not only expensive but tedious.
He added that the discovery of the virus in 19 of confirmed Covid-19 patients was a promising candidate for wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE).
The scientists said EBE was a methodology used to detect the presence of pathogens in communities and to estimate how common the virus maybe without requiring each individual to be tested.
Dr. Obonyo told KNA at Egerton University on Friday, the scientists in the USA wanted to determine whether WBE would be a good candidate to track the virus in the hard-hit state of Massachusetts. They collected 10 samples of sewerage water waste from a major urban facility for compression against water samples collected from before the first USA case was documented on January 20 this year.
He said all of the samples before tested negative for the virus, whereas each sample collected between March 18 and 25 tested positive at ‘’significantly higher’’ levels than expected based on clinically confirmed cases in the state.
He added that although the scientific paper has not yet been peer-reviewed, the study has given a further understanding of the presence of the virus at the population level, which could also assist governments and medical officials to implement informed policy measures.
By Veronica Bosibori
