On Friday, senior officials from the Union Health Ministry stated that they are considering testing wastewater samples from international flights to track emerging variants of COVID-19. Several experts have pointed out that this project will offer better solutions for tracking and monitoring any new variant in comparison to any other travel restriction.

On January 4, the concept of airline wastewater sampling was discussed in the National Task Force meeting held to review the current status of the COVID pandemic in the country. The Union Health Ministry pointed out that this concept of sampling wastewater has also been recommended by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The agency has recommended this concept given the lack of transparency in the data provided by China about new emerging variants.

In the meeting, experts on the task force panel stated that travel restrictions have failed to limit the spread of infection; however, a senior scientist working with a genome sequencing network in New Delhi stated that doing fancier things like wastewater surveillance is useless unless and until there is better surveillance at the ground level. He stated that many experts are under the assumption that new variants always enter India from somewhere else, but they need to understand that new variants can also emerge from within India. 

(Source: https://health.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/policy/govt-mulls-tracking-variants-of-sars-cov-2-in-international-planes-wastewater/96804835 )