Chennai has emerged into a COVID-19 hotspot in Tamil Nadu. The city has been registering hundreds of Corona cases everyday. On Friday, a staggering 176 new cases of the Wuhan virus were reported taking the total cases in the city to 1082 with 843 of them being active.The cases were expected to spike in coming days.
The Greater Chennai Corporation has been taking necessary steps to contain the spread of the virus.
In light of this, the presence of COVID-19 RNA was detected in the sewage samples collected by Chennai Metro water for a study. The samples were collected from five sewage pumping stations in the city and tested for Viral RNA. RT-PCR technique was used to detect the viral RNA strand.
COVID-19 Viral RNA was found in two samples and the area from which those samples were taken has high incidence of corona cases. However, the presence of virus in sewage is not bound to cause infection as the virus gets destroyed during the sewage treatment process. Nevertheless, this will help the officials in finding the areas affected the most by the virus.