How disease detectives hunt on viruses on large US airports

Last year, over 135 million passengers from other countries traveled to the United States. Experts in infectious diseases that represent 135 million opportunities for an outbreak. In order to identify and stop the next potential pandemic, the detectives for the disease of state diseases have discreetly searched for viral pathogens in wastewater from aircraft. Experts fear that these efforts may not be sufficient.

The CDC's genome monitoring program tests sewage from aircraft and is looking for pathogens that may have driven passengers with passengers with passengers. This program works with participating airlines at four large airports: Boston, San Francisco, New York John F. Kennedy and Washington, DC, Dulles in the region.

CBS News received exclusive access to this program on site, which was started in September 2021 and has been expanded since then thanks to a federal government's scholarship in the amount of $ 120 million.

In the time that is needed to unload check luggage, technicians collect a sample of aircraft paints. A courier sends these patterns to a laboratory that is operated by private contractors at Ginkgo Biowork in Boston. The researchers search the genetic material recorded in every water sample and look for infectious pathogens.

“We have to find this needle in a haystack,” said Alex Plocik, Ginkgos Biocurity Genomics Director. “In theory, we can take a look at almost everything that is a possible threat to organic security.”

One day the metagic sequencing, a technology for analyzing the entire genetic material in a sample, could enable new, previously unknown pathogens to be demonstrated.

“These technologies are getting better … on this day,” said Plocik. At the moment, however, they only test seven viruses: Covid-19, influenza A and B, adenovirus, NorovirusRSV, and MPOX.

Wastewater tests can alert scientists within 48 hours if a passenger wears one of these viruses.

Ginkgo shares the results with the centers for the control and prevention of diseases and they are written in a public dashboard to keep scientists all over the world up to date. (The latest data is from February 17th. Neither the CDC nor the White House have commented on the program since President Trump accepted office.)

Flight paths are persecuted so that the CDC can determine where the virus comes from – information that can be particularly valuable if other countries are reluctant to share data for public health. Government officers can use this intelligence to form their reaction of public health, which could include improved surveillance, contact tracking and the administration of vaccines and preventive medication.

A dozen experts consulted by CBS News, however, expressed concerns that the United States is not sufficiently prepared for another significant outbreak. While they are promoted by technological progress such as aircraft water tests, some fear that the current program is too limited to reliably recognize any incoming pathogen. At the moment, the CDC aircraft water test program is only four airports, although according to the Ministry of Transport, there are an estimated 333 international airports in the USA.

Last September, CBS News with Dr. David Fitter, the director of the Global Migration Health from CDC, together to discuss the program and its effects. When asked whether the United States is prepared for a different pandemic, he held up more than 10 seconds before answering. “We learned a lot from Covid. We learned that we need early detection. We have learned about surveillance systems. We learned about the expansion of the test capacity so that we can react faster. We learn further and I think we are ready to go forward,” said Fitter.

The Coronavirus went to the United States on January 15, 2020 when a 35-year-old American businessman, after visiting Wuhan, China, exit from a flight to Washington. Without knowing that he was infected, he became the First confirmed case of Covid-19 in the United States. Public health civil servants are not sure whether he was really the first case in the country, since no tests on passengers or plane water were carried out at that time.

“Disease does not know geographical borders”

The CDC aircraft test program is designed in such a way that you act as a radar for infectious diseases.

“Disease does not know geographical borders,” said Fitter. “Our task is to prevent the disease from entering the USA, and I think it helps us: we can recognize and react faster at an early stage.”

The CDC monitors various outbreaks all over the world – including Marburg in Tanzania, Ebola In Uganda and MPOX in the Democratic Republic of Congo – but of these is currently only the ability to test MPOX in the aircraft water.

As a proof of concept, the CDC aircraft test program was successfully recognized three weeks before the appearance of new covid variants Local wastewater And two weeks before an increase in cases in doctors. This preliminary warning offers civil servants and providers of healthcare and healthcare services for the preparation.

“Early warning could mean the difference between life and millions of deaths,” said Admiral Brett Giroir, President Trump, Covid test tsar At the peak of pandemic in 2020 and today a consultant for infectious diseases of the secretary of the healthcare system and human service Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

While he was at Darpa in Darpa years before Covid Pandemic, Giroir seed wastewater tests as a surveillance instrument to determine whether foreign institutions could produce organic monkeys. But he realized that sewage tests had many potential applications. He was a great advocate of sewage test programs at the beginning of the Covid pandemic.

“When we see that a spike takes place, we do not wait until 300,000 people are in the emergency room. We know immediately that we increase the flag to improve vaccines, to get antivirals, to get tests to get started,” said Giroir.

Recently outclassed US intelligence agencies that “a pathogen can travel from a remote village to a big city in less than thirty-six hours”.

In a report published by the National Intelligence Council last spring, it was found that the Covid Pandemic “tense” global health systems “reduces its ability to recognize and react, reduces and undermined the public's confidence in the government of the willingness of public health. It was the probability that it will not be the last for this generation, which has an “almost 28%chance that a pandemic would occur at least as fatal as Covid-19 in the decade”.

In January one of President Trump's first official measures was to publish A New CIA report This indicates that the Covid 19 pandemic was most likely caused by a laboratory leak in China. The world can never know whether the pandemic comes from one Animal-to-human spilling Or a laboratory leak. However, the expansion of sewage tests via municipal treatment plants and aircraft water can provide answers in the future.

“The lesson I want is that it doesn't matter whether it is natural or a laboratory leak … BSL-4-Labor is a risk,” said Giroir. Wastewater surveillance can be carried out in areas where people come into close contact with domesticated animals or wildlife. “You could even remember to carry out wastewater surveillance from the BSL-4 laboratory, because if the person is infected, use the toilet in this laboratory, and you may be able to find this error out of the wastewater if you know that someone has been infected,” said Giroir.