Enlarge / Passengers on an Air France flight on April 20, 2021. (credit: Getty | Francois LOCHON )

In a small trial, aircraft wastewater proved easy and useful for monitoring the SARS-CoV-2 variants touching down in the US, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Thursday.

The study found that the testing could be done cheaply and easily; it only added about three extra minutes to aircraft maintenance times at airports and didn't require hassling passengers with nose swabs or other sampling methods. Moreover, the testing could be easily scaled up as needed as the world largely abandons other SARS-CoV-2 testing and monitoring strategies, the CDC authors concluded.

"This investigation demonstrated the feasibility of aircraft wastewater surveillance as a low-resource approach compared with individual testing to monitor SARS-CoV-2 variants without direct traveler involvement or disruption to airport operations," the authors concluded.

Enlarge / A bathroom on an Airbus A321neo. (credit: Getty | Nicolas Economou/NurPhoto )

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is considering blending sewage sampling from airplanes into the mix of its wastewater surveillance system, which has proven useful for monitoring the spread and prevalence of a variety of pathogens, particularly SARS-CoV-2.

Amid the pandemic, the CDC launched wastewater testing programs across the nation, trying to get ahead of SARS-CoV-2 surges. Viral particles are often shed in fecal matter and can be an early indication of an infection. The fecal focus has proven useful for sniffing out community-wide transmission trends and disease spread for not only COVID-19 but also other recent outbreaks as well, namely polio and mpox (formerly monkeypox). Adding surveillance from airplanes and airports could flush out yet more information about infectious disease spread, such as global travel patterns and the debut of novel viral variants.

A study published last week in PLOS Global Public Health found such sewage surveillance in UK airport terminals and airplanes was effective at tracking SARS-CoV-2 among international travelers. Overall, the surveillance data suggested that it is a "useful tool for monitoring the global transfer rate of human pathogens and other disease-causing agents across international borders and should form part of wider international efforts to monitor and contain the spread of future disease outbreaks," the authors, led by Kata Farkas of Bangor University, concluded.

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images)

The same strain of poliovirus that paralyzed an unvaccinated young man in New York's Rockland County this summer is still spreading in several areas of the state as of early October, according to a wastewater surveillance study published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday.

The finding suggests that the virus continues to pose a serious threat to anyone in the area that is unvaccinated or under-vaccinated. The three counties with sustained transmission—Rockland, Orange, and Sullivan—have pockets of alarmingly low vaccination rates.

In Rockland, for instance, one county zip code has a polio vaccination rate among children under 2 years old of just 37 percent, according to state data . In Orange, a zip code has a vaccination rate of just 31 percent. County-wide vaccination rates of Rockland and Orange are 60 percent and about 59 percent, respectively.

Enlarge / A health worker administers a polio vaccine to a child out of Kabul Afghanistan on May 17, 2016. (credit: Getty | Anadolu Agency )

A vaccine-derived version of poliovirus has repeatedly surfaced in London sewage over the past several months, suggesting there may be a cryptic or hidden spread among some unvaccinated people, UK health officials announced Wednesday .

No polio cases have been reported so far, nor any identified cases of paralysis. But sewage sampling in one London treatment plant has repeatedly detected closely related vaccine-derived polioviruses between February and May. This suggests "it is likely there has been some spread between closely-linked individuals in North and East London and that they are now shedding the type 2 poliovirus strain in their feces," the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) said.

Though the current situation raises alarm, the agency notes that it's otherwise common to see a small number of vaccine-like polioviruses pop up in sewage from time to time, usually from people who have recently been vaccinated out of the country. This is because many countries use oral polio vaccines that include weakened (attenuated) polioviruses, which can still replicate in the intestines and thus be present in stool. They can also spread to others via poor hygiene and sanitation (i.e., unwashed hands and food or water contaminated by sewage), which can become concerning amid poor vaccination rates.