Publications by authors named "Manuel Ampuero"

Sewage surveillance provides useful epidemiologic and public health information on viral infections at the population level. We detected monkeypox virus DNA from sewage samples covering 85% of the population in Santiago Metropolitan Region Chile. We also isolated infective viruses from those samples.

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Objectives: Hepatitis A (HAV) virus causes asymptomatic to life-treating fulminant hepatitis. During infection, patients show large viral excretion in their stools. Resistance of HAV to environmental conditions, allows us to recover viral nucleotide sequences from wastewater and trace its evolutionary history.

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During the COVID-19 pandemic, wastewater from WWTPs became an interesting source of epidemiological surveillance. However, there is uncertainty about the influence of treatment type on virus removal. The aim of this study was to assess viral surveillance within wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) based on different biological treatments.

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Screening, testing and contact tracing plays a pivotal role in control of the COVID-19 pandemic. To enable this it is necessary to increase the testing capacity. This study compared a SARS-CoV-2 rapid antigen test (RAT) and RT-PCR in 842 asymptomatic individuals from Tarapacá, Chile.

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Human polyomavirus JC (JCPyV) is a widely distributed viral agent and because it high resistance against environmental conditions it is frequently recovered from diverse sources of water and is considered a good marker for human pollution. Phylogenetic analysis of JCPyV isolated in different part of the world has revealed 7 genotypes, which have been associated with specific populations or ethnics groups. This feature has been used to trace pre-historic and historic human migration patterns across the world.

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