Portal de Lorca
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The "City Sentinel" tool, developed by the Suez Group to which Hidrogea belongs, will allow the appearance of new outbreaks to be anticipated through monitoring of wastewater to quantify the presence of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.The mayor of Lorca and president of the Board of Directors of Aguas de Lorca, Diego José Mateos, and the vice mayor of Lorca and counselor of the same, Francisco Morales, have reported the implementation, by Aguas de Lorca, of an innovative system capable of detecting the presence of COVID-19 in wastewater.This tool, called "City Sentinel", which has been developed by Suez, the group to which Hidrogea, a shareholder of Aguas de Lorca, belongs, combines an adapted sampling plan, rapid RT-qPCR analysis and access to a digital observatory.Diego José Mateos has stated that "this system monitors the evolution of the virus in wastewater and anticipates the appearance of possible new outbreaks in the population.
From Aguas de Lorca, work has been done to implement this novel monitoring system in its routine spill control tasks, which, together with the sectorization and monitoring of the sewage network, will make it possible to determine if this virus is present in highly localized areas and neighborhoods and to more easily trace its origin, if it were detected.
"For his part, Francisco Morales wanted to highlight "the increasing importance of applying innovative technological solutions to position ourselves at the forefront under criteria of business efficiency and sustainability and care for the environment.
The launch of 'City Sentinel' perfectly combines with our objective of locating Lorca as a safe destination and allowing us to have more health guarantees for the citizens of Lorca.
Our municipality is demonstrating its adaptation to the new reality, being one of the pioneers of the Region of Murcia to have this modern tool ".The collaboration of numerous experts, led by Dr.
Albert Bosch, a world-renowned specialist in the field of aquatic virology attached to the University of Barcelona, ??guarantees the validation of the adapted sampling plans, whose sampling points and frequency will be adjusted according to population and epidemiological criteria.The "Covid-19 City Sentinel", which will be implemented in Lorca in the coming days, is part of the strategy of innovative solutions that Suez has developed in the fight against SARS-CoV-2, among which stand out the development of Comprehensive Plans for Hygiene and Environmental Disinfection, Advanced Disinfection of SARS-CoV-2 with certification of safe space, or the monitoring of the density and capacity of beaches using computerized vision.In this way, Suez makes its experience and knowledge of sewage networks and spill control available to municipalities to sectorize the municipality's sewerage in areas of influence that help trace the origin of SARS-VOC-2 when it is detected.This solution has been developed based on the results of the research study - Reveal project - launched a few months ago and led by Cetaqua, in which hundreds of samples have already been analyzed in 5 Spanish cities with different incidence of the epidemic (with a total of more than 6 million people).In the same way, Labaqua laboratories, a national reference in the implementation of PCR techniques for environmental matrices, are able to deliver reliable results in less than 48 hours, using genetic markers of SARS_COV_2 in wastewater, in which the virus can be detected.
and quantified.The launch of "Covid-19 City Sentinel" will allow Aguas de Lorca to benefit from the experience of a Group that has been collaborating actively in epidemiological surveillance and virus detection in wastewater for more than 20 years.
Source: Ayuntamiento de Lorca
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