Science

Sewage detectives: how UKHSA is using wastewater to track common viruses and emerging threats

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Sewage treatment works with an image inset of Sejal Wadhia, Business Operations Manager and Zarqa Khan, Junior Project Manager in the Immunisation & Vaccine Preventable Diseases Division (IVPD)

The wastewater that we send from our toilets towards sewage treatment plants every day is potentially rich in data about our health. For the past 4 years, UKHSA has been monitoring wastewater across England for signs of polio, and over the past year has been testing new technologies to detect other potential threats. The next …

Lab in a Bag: How we took diagnostics to the other side of the world during the hantavirus outbreak

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UKHSA microbiologists Clara Milroy and Kimberley Steeds, along with infection prevention and control expert Anthony Twyman, arrive in Saint Helena with the mobile laboratory

Last week, 3 of our colleagues packed a fully functioning laboratory into a set of flight cases and boarded a plane to one of the most remote islands on Earth. Saint Helena, a UK Overseas Territory in the South Atlantic …