NSW Health said trace amounts of the virus that causes COVID-19 had been found in the Marrickville Sewage Network. The catchment handles sewage from the suburbs of Marrickville, Dulwich Hill, Summer Hill, Lewisham, Ashfield, Haberfield, Petersham, Lilyfield and Leichhardt, home to some 42,000 people.The alert came after an eastern suburbs man in his 50s tested positive for coronavirus on Wednesday morning, although it wasn’t clear if the positive case and the wastewater fragments were related. “NSW Health is asking everyone in these areas to be especially vigilant in monitoring for symptoms, and if they appear to get tested and isolate immediately until a negative result is received,” the department said. “NSW Health is providing a new COVID-19 pop-up testing clinic and extended hours at existing clinics, including drive-throughs, to support increased testing in Sydney’s east and inner city.”A new pop-up clinic had also been established at Albion Street Centre Laverty Pathology in Surry Hills. The eastern suburbs man’s positive test result has sparked frantic efforts to figure out how he was infected. He has no links to hotel quarantine, border control or health work, NSW chief health officer Kerry Chant said on Wednesday.A genome sequencing analysis was expected to give further clues as to where the man was infected. Results were expected on Thursday afternoon.“All of the usual routes where we would expect someone to have acquired the infection are not clear,” Dr Chant said.“And that’s why this is really – requires us to do that genome sequencing to give us that understanding of where that source of infection was, and then we can work backwards from that.”She said the man had an especially high viral load which means he could be more infectious than other COVID-19 cases.It was believed the man has been infectious since April 30.It was the first case of community spread in NSW since April 1.
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