WASTE WATERS

On 17 March 2021, the EU Commission's 'Recommendation 2021/472 on a common approach for establishing systematic surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 and its variants in wastewater in the EU' required Member States to put in place, no later than 1 October 2021, national epidemiological surveillance systems for urban wastewater aimed at collecting data on SARS-CoV-2 and its variants. The Province of Trento, through the Chemical-Biological Laboratory of the Purification Agency's Plant Management Service, is analysing and supplying the Istituto Superiore della Sanità (national coordinator and beneficiary of the project for Italy) with data regarding the concentration of SARS-CoV-2 in the three main purification plants in the Province of Trento, within the timeframe (obligation to communicate the analytical results within 48 hours of sampling) and in the manner required by the European project.

The aim of the European project, coordinated by the Istituto Superiore della Sanità, is to set up a network of territorial structures to analyse the presence of SARS-COV-2 in urban waste water in order to carry out preventive monitoring on the presence of the virus and its possible propagation in Italy. Various studies conducted by the Istituto Superiore della Sanità and other research carried out at an international level have shown that a capillary surveillance network of the SARS-COV-2 virus in wastewater is able to provide a snapshot of the trend of contagions in near-real time, anticipating the places where the virus circulates. Such monitoring is therefore of considerable importance in the health management of the current pandemic.