81% of international flights into NYC had SARS-CoV-2 in waste, small trial finds

Enlarge / Passengers on an Air France flight on April 20, 2021. (credit: Getty | Francois LOCHON)

In a small trial, aircraft wastewater proved easy and useful for monitoring the SARS-CoV-2 variants touching down in the US, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Thursday.

The study found that the testing could be done cheaply and easily; it only added about three extra minutes to aircraft maintenance times at airports and didn’t require hassling passengers with nose swabs or other sampling methods. Moreover, the testing could be easily scaled up as needed as the world largely abandons other SARS-CoV-2 testing and monitoring strategies, the CDC authors concluded.

“This investigation demonstrated the feasibility of aircraft wastewater surveillance as a low-resource approach compared with individual testing to monitor SARS-CoV-2 variants without direct traveler involvement or disruption to airport operations,” the authors concluded.