Hyderabad: Hussainsagar, 2 other lakes infested with coronavirus

HYDERABAD: Hussainsagar, which is synonymous with chemical and biological cesspool, is now infested with the novel coronavirus, a research study revealed. Apart from the Hussainsagar, other city lakes where the virus has been found are Pedda Cheruvu or Nacharam lake and Nizam Talab or Turka Cheruvu in Pragathinagar near Kukatpally.
The coronavirus, however, has not found its way into lakes that are in peri-urban and rural areas around Hyderabad.Edulabad and Potharaju lakes on city outskirts are free of the rogue pandemic germ. Though the lakes are infested with the novel coronavirus, the good news is that there are so far no documented studies to prove Covid-19 can spread through water unlike the polio virus.
That the city lakes now harbour the novel coronavirus has come to light in a research study done by scientists of the Indian Institute of Chemical Technology (IICT) and Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB), Hyderabad and the Academy of Scientific and Innovative Research (AcSIR), Ghaziabad. The research team, which earlier scoured sewage and waste water to find out the presence of the pandemic virus shed through human faeces as part of waste water epidemiological (WWE) study, has now included the lakes within the city and outskirts.
Referring to faecal-oral transmission, the scientists said unlike the polio virus, transmission of SARS-CoV-2 through water contamination is not well established. Only one report showed successful culturing of SARS-CoV-2 virus from waste water. “The independent previous studies showed presence and persistence of SARS-CoV-2 in sewage water and water bodies such as lakes and rivers, because of which the possible faecal-oral transmission cannot be neglected,” they said.
Almost all the city lakes are linked to the municipal sewerage network and a major portion of the waste water is let into these water bodies untreated. The study of the city lakes has also revealed that there were early signals of Covid-19 second wave onset in February. The impact was realised only by mid-April. The result of the research study was published in preprint server ‘MedRxiv’ on May 12.
“We monitored urban, peri-urban and rural lakes in and around Hyderabad as a long-term surveillance study for presence of enteric virus SARS-CoV-2 (novel coronavirus) gene fragments.
The study time of seven months coincided with the first and second wave of Covid-19 infection,” the researchers said. The study depicted differential viral RNA copies in the urban lake with high viral load observed during the peaks of wave I and wave II.
The study found a distinct variability in viral genes detection among all five lakes, which were in concordance with the human activity of the catchment area. The SARS-CoV-2 genes were not detected in peri-urban and rural lakes, whereas the urban lakes having direct functional attributes from domestic activity in the community showed presence of viral load.