Portal de Lorca
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| The City Sentinel digital tool has analyzed 87 samples that anticipate the evolution of the disease by areas and its possible trend | Lorca has been the first municipality in the Murcia Region to launch the "COVID19 City Sentinel", a comprehensive epidemiological alert service that monitors wastewater in search of fragments of genetic traces of COVID19, which allows an indicator of early warning of the evolution of the disease in the city's neighborhoods. City Sentinel is a digital platform that DINAPSIS Región de Murcia, a center integrated in SUEZ's network of technology hubs, makes available to administrations for the detection and quantification of SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater.
DINAPSIS is a technological hub located in Cartagena and places knowledge, digitization and technology at the service of different social agents to face climate change and create greener, more sustainable and resilient territories and cities. The Lorca City Council decided to incorporate these wastewater monitoring services in July of this year in search of advance information that allows better management of the health crisis at the municipal level.
Thus, Aguas de Lorca, in response to this need, and through SUEZ, the Group to which Hidrogea belongs, a shareholder of this joint venture, incorporated in the same month of July the surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 in the controls carried out on the waters that run through the sewer network. From then until now, 87 controls have been carried out at different points of the sewage network, as well as at the inlet collectors to the treatment plants. "The results obtained at all times are directly transferred to a digital monitoring platform, City Sentinel, where in a graphical and intuitive way the geographical areas of the municipality that have a higher or lower concentration of COVID19 in their wastewater can be evidenced.
Furthermore, the system makes it possible to consult, through graphs, the evolution of said concentration and compare it with the information on the evolution of the pandemic provided by the health authorities ", explains Marcos Martín, Director of Dinapsis. The data obtained from the monitoring carried out in Lorca have been made, from the first moment, at the disposal of the health authority, which has allowed this body to have additional information that anticipates the detection of outbreaks and the full collaboration of the staff technician of the municipal company of Aguas de Lorca.
"As a result of this collaboration, the sampling points have been adapted, at all times, to the general interest expressed by the health authority", continues to explain the head of this technology center for water and the environment. The experience gained in the use of the City Sentinel has corroborated that the control of COVID19 in wastewater anticipates, in a feasible way and at the municipal level, the evolution of the disease in terms of its possible trend, becoming a fundamental tool for the monitoring and management of the current health crisis by the administrations, complementary to the PCR analyzes carried out in medical centers. There is also the circumstance that these analyzes carried out on the wastewater of Lorca are carried out under the accreditation with which, for this analysis, the SUEZ Group has, being the first national laboratory accredited by ENAC for the detection of SARS-CoV- 2 in waste water. Specifically, the accredited analytical technique, which was developed by Labaqua as a result of innovation and collaboration with international technology centers, allows the determination of SARS-CoV-2 by RT-qPCR (quantitative PCR).
In other words, the technique allows, using genetic markers of SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater, in which the virus can be detected and quantified, to deliver reliable results in less than 48 hours. The collaboration of SUEZ with the group of experts headed 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 sample points with population and epidemiological criteria. The importance and value that this analytical monitoring can contribute to the control of collective health was endorsed by the Aguas de Lorca Board of Directors, which unanimously decided to continue and maintain the monitoring of wastewater by analyzing the evolution of SARS- CoV-2, and with it, make the grain of Aguas de Lorca available to the fight against the disease in the municipality and contribute with everything that is in the hands of the joint venture. The City Sentinel has already been established in numerous cities of the national territory.
SUEZ is already monitoring more than 500 sample points in more than 80 municipalities with an equivalent population of more than 12.5 million inhabitants. Hidrogea, expanding the network of SUEZ technology hubs with the opening in Cartagena of the DINAPSIS Region of Murcia, is committed to the incorporation of new technologies to the management of environmental services, making this and other digital solutions available to administrations to advance together towards more efficient and sustainable management models.
Source: Agencias
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