Determining customer benefits of reduced influenza and norovirus transmission, using sewage surveillance

Untap is tackling one of the greatest challenges of our time, keeping our communities safe from viruses and infections. Currently viruses are only detected when an individual presents symptoms. Often, this is after viral transmission has already occurred. Influenza and norovirus were estimated to cost the UK economy 4% productivity loss in 2019; accounting for £ billions in lost revenue, and millions of infected individuals. Sewage surveillance is an incredible tool. It is used to measure the health of a community directly by their collective sewage. Humans shed viral RNA from day zero of infection, therefore this can be used to detect viruses pre-symptoms, and pre-transmission. Unlike lateral flow tests, which often have low participation rates, wastewater can provide broad coverage. However, the current state-of-the-art is manually collecting the sewage and analysing it in a laboratory. This analysis takes days, and costs up to £ thousands per sample. The cost and delay to the data has prevented sewage surveillance being carried out at a local scale. Untap have developed a prototype to detect COVID-19 in sewage of a community: onsite, automated, sewage surveillance. In this project we will develop this prototype to detect influenza and norovirus. This prototype will then be deployed long term at two sites, integrating the viral data into their day-to-day workflow. This will enable us to determine the customer benefits, both economic and intangible.