A bilateral US-UK airplane wastewater monitoring pilot demonstrates the feasibility of an international wastewater surveillance network

Program participants; participating airlines and airports; the CDC Port Health Protection Branch and UKHSA Border Health team. We thank all Ginkgo Operations, Sequencing, and Epidemiology team members who contributed to this work, with special acknowledgment to past and present Program Managers: Claire Altieri, Ben H. Rome, Amy Schierhorn, Tim Lyden, and Robert C. Morfino. We acknowledge 20/30 Laboratories, UK (Mett Smart and Farzana Sultana) who conducted phase 1 of the UK experimental work.

This project has been funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (75D30122C14933) and the UK Health Security Agency.

1. These authors contributed equally to this work.

2. A list of authors and their affiliations appears at the end of the paper.

Authors and Affiliations

1. Chief Data Officer Group, UK Health Security Agency, London, United Kingdom

   Matthew J. Wade & Elizabeth Perry

2. Division of Global Migration Health, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, GA, USA

   Ian Ruskey & Cindy R. Friedman

3. UK Department for Transport, London, United Kingdom

   Valerie Meehan

4. Ginkgo Biosecurity, Boston, MA, USA

   Andrew P. Rothstein, Dawn Gratalo, Sarah Rush & Birgitte Simen

5. Chief Scientific Officer Group, UK Health Security Agency, London, United Kingdom

   Karly-Rai Rogers-Broadway, Suam Gonzalez, Catherine Ryan, Christopher Burton, Raju Misra, Darren Chooneea, Elona Hutchins, Toby Lock, Kiera Baker & Amy Hughes

6. Friedman Global Health & Biosecurity, LLC, Atlanta, GA, USA

   Cindy R. Friedman

Consortia

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to
Matthew J. Wade or Ian Ruskey.

Competing interests

A.P.R., D.G., S.R., and B.S. were employed by Ginkgo Bioworks at the time of the study and received Ginkgo Bioworks stocks. M.J.W., I.R., E.P., V.M., and C.R.F. declare no competing interests.

Ethical approval

This activity was reviewed by CDC, deemed not research, and was conducted consistent with applicable federal law and CDC policy (see e.g., 45 C.F.R. part 46; 21 C.F.R. part 56; 42 U.S.C. §241(d), 5 U.S.C. §552a, 44 U.S.C. §3501 et seq.). The activity was also reviewed by the UKHSA Research & Public Health Practice Ethics and Governance Group, which deemed that there was no risk of harm to participants and no disclosure requirement due to the absence of personal information collected.

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