South Korea's disease control agency reported on Sunday that the level of COVID-19 virus in wastewater has almost doubled within a week, coinciding with a spike in infections over the summer vacation period.
According to a statement by Yonhap News Agency, the Korea Wastewater Surveillance Programme, operated by the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA), noted that the average concentration of the virus at local sewage treatment plants hit 47,640 copies per millilitre in the second week of August. This represents a significant increase from the 24,602 copies per millilitre recorded in the previous week. The data was collected from 84 wastewater plants nationwide, and the KDCA has utilized this method since April last year to estimate the number of COVID-19 patients in communities.
"The project is designed to monitor the trend of COVID-19 virus levels in wastewater, which have been escalating recently," stated a KDCA official. Concurrently, the number of newly hospitalized COVID-19 patients in Korea surged to 1,359 in the second week of August, up from 878 the week before.
