Ingenuity

It's extremely unlikely, in the history of humanity, that there has ever been so much brain power directed towards solving one problem - COVID-19.  Every day reveals new efforts directed towards vaccines, treatments, containment, testing, restarting the economy, and so on.  The ingenuity and lateral thinking being deployed often surprises me.

The cliffs of North Avoca from The Skillion this morning

One such effort, that I heard about in an Australian Broadcasting Corporation news item, will be the testing of sewage in Australian cities for COVID-19 markers.  Apparently, fragments of the virus are shed in faeces and that can happen up to three days before symptoms emerge according to some preliminary research.

Sewage has been analysed for some time to detect the use of antibiotics and illegal drugs and to compile statistics by geographic areas in Australia.  The hope is that the same strategy could provide good evidence of the presence of COVID-19 in an area as an aid to more targeted testing, and for ongoing monitoring.  Brilliant!

Wamberal and Forresters beaches from The Skillion this morning

I had a day off running today, and just walked a local 5km this morning.  It was busy along the Terrigal promenade and people are gathering in larger groups.  I guess that was inevitable, despite the government exhortations to maintain social-distancing, given the very low number of new COVID-19 infections being reported.  People are interpreting this as a sign that they can relax a little and that the government has things under control.  Hope they are right.  Perhaps some kind of daily COVID-19 sewage presence indicator, by locality, needs to be published as a dose of reality.