A global aircraft-based wastewater genomic surveillance network for early warning of future pandemics.

Jiaying Li, Ian Hosegood, David Powell, Ben Tscharke, Jenny Lawler, Kevin V Thomas, Jochen F Mueller

The Lancet. Global health 2023 May

filter terms:

aircraft (6)

cross border (1)

humans (1)

public health (1)

sars cov (2)

Sizes of these terms reflect their relevance to your search.

International airports can have a key role in screening, detecting, and mitigating cross-border transmission of SARS-CoV-2 and potentially other infectious diseases. With aircraft passengers representing a subpopulation of a country or region, aircraft-based wastewater surveillance can be a promising approach to effectively identifying emerging viruses, tracing their evolution, and mapping global spread with international flights. Therefore, we propose the development of a global aircraft-based wastewater genomic surveillance network, with the busiest international airports as central nodes and continuing air travel journeys as vectors. This surveillance programme requires routinely collecting aircraft wastewater samples for microbiological analysis and sequencing and linking the resulting data with associated international air traffic information. With the creation of a strong international alliance between the airline industry and health authorities, this surveillance network will potentially complement public health systems with a true early warning ability to inform decision making for new variants and future global health risks. Copyright © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an Open Access article under the CC BY 4.0 license. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.

Citation

Jiaying Li, Ian Hosegood, David Powell, Ben Tscharke, Jenny Lawler, Kevin V Thomas, Jochen F Mueller. A global aircraft-based wastewater genomic surveillance network for early warning of future pandemics. The Lancet. Global health. 2023 May;11(5):e791-e795