The Health Ministry has been leading a project in order to identify COVID-19 from wastewater, using technology developed by Israeli tech company Kando.
Since the pandemic began, using technology in wastewater areas, the Health Ministry has initiated projects in a number of cities in Israel as a means of finding a solution to identify the novel coronavirus. Researchers from Ben-Gurion University and the Technion also assisted with the initiative.
The Health Ministry is using Kando's tech and will deploy hundreds of control units throughout Israel.
The technology is used to identify COVID-19 using sensors and control units placed in municipal sewage systems to collect data, as well as AI and computer analyses.
All of this could prevent a future wave of increased morbidity and allow the early discovery of new variants using geographical identification.
The initiative includes the bi-weekly monitoring of towns with a population of more than 20,000 people. This would allow the collection of samples that could be used to detect the presence of the virus in wastewater.
Laboratories at Ben-Gurion University collect these samples and conduct PCR tests suitable for wastewater. If there are any positive results, another test is carried out to determine within the next day whether or not this indicates the presence of the Omicron variant.