Coronavirus found in wastewater across country

Coronavirus genome was detected in a total of 26 samples taken from wastewater treatment plants, said the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (THL) in a press release on Tuesday, quoting a latest extensive monitoring exercise.

The monitoring exercise that took place on 24 and 25 January, however, did not find coronavirus in samples taken from Luotsinmäki plant in Pori and Hopeakivenlahti plant in Kokkola.

In the first extensive wastewater monitoring on 10 and 11 January, coronavirus genome was found at all wastewater treatment plants from where samples were collected, with the exception of Hopeakivenlahti in Kokkola.

In total, samples taken from 28 waste water treatment plants were tested for coronavirus over two-week monitoring period.

The total numbers of coronavirus RNA copies in samples collected from wastewater treatment plants are rather consistent with the incidence of coronavirus infections in Finland. These wastewater samples cover around 60 per cent of the Finnish population.

“The observations of coronavirus detected in wastewater largely follow the case trend observed in individual testing. Depending on when the wastewater sample is collected, we have at times been able to detect an acceleration phase of the epidemic even before individual testing,” said THL Chief Specialist Tarja Pitkänen.