In view of the strong wave of CoV in China, the wastewater of all flights from China will be tested for new variants of the virus in Austria starting next week. The Ministry of Health announced this today. The samples would be taken directly from the aircraft’s waste water tanks, so that new variants of the virus could be discovered particularly well, he said. In addition, the Hallstatt wastewater treatment plant will be included in the federal wastewater monitoring system.
Sewage treatment plants in Vienna and Salzburg are already part of the federal monitoring program. According to the Ministry of Health, all places frequently visited by tourists from China would be regularly examined. This could be used to discover new variants of the virus, even if visitors from China entered the country through other means.
“Unlike China, which until now has been characterized by a Covid-zero strategy, in Austria we are registering broad immunity against the omicron variant, which also dominates in China,” the Ministry of Health said in a statement.
Unplanned tests on input
Mandatory coronavirus tests for travelers from China, as introduced by EU countries Italy, France and Spain, are not yet planned. To this end, Austria is moving towards a coordinated European approach, it said on Tuesday. A meeting of the IPCR’s crisis response mechanism will take place in Brussels on Wednesday, at which EU countries will again discuss how to deal with travelers from China.
The Austrian Food Safety and Health Agency (AGES) is responsible for sequencing the wastewater samples from aircraft arriving from China.