Medical officers are calling for sewage analyzes to be extended to all municipalities in order to get a more detailed overview of the status of the spread of the corona virus.
"The wastewater analysis is an excellent tool for pandemic control," said Johannes Nießen, chairman of the Federal Association of Physicians in the Public Health Service, to the newspapers of the Essen Funke media group.
So far, only 20 German cities have taken part in EU wastewater monitoring.
Nießen is head of the Cologne Health Department and a member of the German government’s Corona Expert Council.
It would be ideal for all municipalities to participate, said Nießen.
"The more cities that take part, the more precise our picture of the infection process becomes." The method costs little, the effort is low, and you get a real-time picture of the pandemic situation.
In Cologne, it was determined in this way that only around half of the current corona reporting numbers recorded infections, said the doctor: “The official incidence is currently around 800, but from the wastewater analysis we know that it is actually is over 1,500.”
In March 2021, the EU Commission asked the member states to use wastewater monitoring systematically to combat the corona pandemic.
Because infected people excrete the virus through their stool, wastewater samples from sewage treatment plants can be used to quickly show where and to what extent which variant is spreading.