SARS-CoV-2 Testing of Aircraft Wastewater Shows That Mandatory Tests and Vaccination Pass before Boarding Did Not Prevent Massive Importation of Omicron Variant into Europe

Targa, Lorlane Le; Wurtz, Nathalie; Lacoste, Alexandre; Penant, Gwilherm; Jardot, Priscilla; Annessi, Alexandre; Colson, Philippe; Scola, Bernard La; Aherfi, Sarah

doi:10.3390/v14071511

Cited by 14 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…This observation is likely an additional example of the difficulty of limiting the circulation of new variants between countries during international transport and of the inadequacy of the measures put in place for this goal. This has been shown very clearly by a recent study which detected the Omicron BA.1 variant in the wastewater of aircraft arriving in Marseille (France) from Addis-Ababa (Ethiopia), while the passengers had been considered uninfected on boarding [ 15 ].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 92%

“…It has been possible to observe in the Marseille geographical area that in the vast majority of cases, the emergence of a new SARS-CoV-2 variant was due to its introduction from abroad in a context of travel, with transport identified by cars, boats, trains, or planes [ 1 ]. This points out the limits in the performance of the means implemented to hamper the importation of variants from one country to another through international travel [ 15 ]. We describe, here, the first evidence in Monaco of infection with an Omicron BA.5/22B variant, probably imported from the Republic of Seychelles, harboring a rare combination of non-signature amino acid changes.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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First Detection of the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron BA.5/22B in Monaco

et al. 2022

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The Omicron BA.5/22B variant has been designated as a “variant of concern” by the World Health Organization. We describe, here, the first evidence in Monaco of infection with an Omicron BA.5/22B variant, probably imported from the Republic of Seychelles, harboring a rare combination of non-BA.5/22B signature amino acid changes. SARS-CoV-2 neutralizing antibodies were measured with a surrogate virus neutralization test. SARS-CoV-2 genotype screening was performed on nasopharyngeal samples with a multiplex qPCR assay. The SARS-CoV-2 genome was obtained by next-generation sequencing with the Illumina COVID-seq protocol, then assembly using bioinformatics pipelines and software was performed. The BA.5/22B spike protein structure was obtained by molecular modeling. Two spouses were SARS-CoV-2-diagnosed the day they returned from a one-week trip in the Republic of Seychelles. SARS-CoV-2 qPCR screening for variant-specific mutations identified an Omicron variant BA.1/21K, BA.4/22A, or BA.5/22B. A SARS-Co-2 BA.5/22B variant genome was recovered from one of the spouses. Aside from BA.5/22B-defining amino acid substitutions, four other amino acid changes were encoded including Q556K in ORF1a, K2557R in ORF1b, and A67V and A829T in spike; only 13 genomes in sequence databases harbored these four mutations concurrently. Structural analysis of this BA.5/22B variant predicted that A829T in spike may result in a compaction that may affect conformational plasticity. Overall, our findings warrant performing genome-based genotypic surveillance to survey accurately the emergence and circulation of SARS-CoV-2 variants worldwide and point out that their first occurrence in a country is often through international travel despite implemented countermeasures.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 92%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

First Detection of the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron BA.5/22B in Monaco

et al. 2022

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“…Wastewater sampling works because people infected with SARS-CoV-2 can shed the virus in their faeces, even when asymptomatic. In December 2021, researchers from France tested the wastewater of two planes arriving in Marseille from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and found that while mandatory predeparture covid-19 testing was in place, traces of the virus were still detected and a significant number of passengers were found to be infected 4…”

Section: Sounds Plane and Simple mentioning

confidence: 99%

Sixty seconds on . . . aeroplane waste

Mahase¹

2023

BMJ

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Blue sky thinking?The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is reportedly considering sampling aeroplane wastewater in an attempt to track new SARS-CoV-2 variants from China. 1 The idea is being floated in response to the resurgence of covid-19 in China, with modellers predicting cases could hit 3.7m a day by 13 January with deaths potentially rising to 25 000 a day around 10 days later. 2 Could it be piloted?While it's still being considered by the CDC, it's not such a fanciful idea. Wastewater sampling-also referred to as sewage monitoring-has been used as part of public health plans for decades, including during the US polio outbreaks in 1939. In the UK in recent years it has been used during the covid-19 pandemic to monitor SARS-CoV-2 and also enabled officials to spot poliovirus in London. 3 Sounds plane and simple . . . Wastewater sampling works because people infected with SARS-CoV-2 can shed the virus in their faeces, even when asymptomatic. In December 2021, researchers from France tested the wastewater of two planes arriving in Marseille from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and found that while mandatory predeparture covid-19 testing was in place, traces of the virus were still detected and a significant number of passengers were found to be infected. 4 A waste of time?Since covid-19 is now endemic across the UK and US, with both countries removing the control measures that had kept infection levels at a lower level, it is reasonable to ask whether testing aeroplane wastewater could really make a difference. The answer seems to be no, and yes.

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“…Prior to removal, border screening programmes provided rich data on the importation of SARS-CoV-2 (Williams et al, 2021), and helped to map the international prevalence of new variants (Douglas et al, 2022). With the reduction in large-scale screening of inbound passengers, many countries have begun to adopt monitoring of aircraft wastewater as a potentially non-intrusive alternative for monitoring pathogens entering a country or region (Ahmed et al, 2022; Le Targa et al, 2022; Farkas et al, 2023).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evaluating the theoretical performance of aircraft wastewater monitoring as a tool for SARS-CoV-2 surveillance

Shingleton¹,

Lilley²,

Wade³

2023

Preprint

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Background Air travel plays an import role in the cross-border spread of infectious diseases. During the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic many countries introduced strict border testing protocols to monitor the incursion of the virus. However, the high implementation cost and significant inconvenience to passengers has led public health authorities to consider alternative methods of disease surveillance at borders. Aircraft wastewater monitoring has been proposed as one such alternative. In this paper we assess the theoretical limits of aircraft wastewater monitoring and compare its performance to post-arrival border screening approaches. Methods We use an infectious disease model to simulate an unmitigated SARS-CoV-2 epidemic in a seed country. Seeding of the epidemic into the United Kingdom (UK) is simulated through daily flights between the two countries. We use a probabilistic approach to estimate the time of first detection of the disease in the UK in both aircraft wastewater and respiratory swab screening at the border. Results For simulations across a broad range of model parameters, our analysis indicates that the median time between the first incursion of a pathogen and its detection in wastewater would be approximately 17 days (IQR: 7 - 28 days), resulting in a median of 25 cumulative cases (IQR: 6 - 84 cases) in the UK at the point of detection. Comparisons to respiratory swab screening suggest that aircraft wastewater monitoring is as effective as screening of 20% of passengers at the border, using a test with 95% sensitivity. For testing regimes with sensitivity of 85% or less, the required coverage to outperform wastewater monitoring increases to 30%. These results demonstrate the potential use cases of aircraft wastewater monitoring and its utility in a wider system of public health surveillance.

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SARS-CoV-2 Testing of Aircraft Wastewater Shows That Mandatory Tests and Vaccination Pass before Boarding Did Not Prevent Massive Importation of Omicron Variant into Europe

Cited by 14 publications

References 27 publications

First Detection of the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron BA.5/22B in Monaco

First Detection of the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron BA.5/22B in Monaco

Sixty seconds on . . . aeroplane waste

Evaluating the theoretical performance of aircraft wastewater monitoring as a tool for SARS-CoV-2 surveillance

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