• Manupati Hemalatha, Uday Kiran, Santosh Kumar Kuncha, Harishankar Kopperi, C G Gokulan, S Venkata Mohan, and Rakesh K Mishra.
• Bioengineering and Environmental Sciences Lab, Department of Energy and Environmental Engineering (DEEE), CSIR-Indian Institute of Chemical Technology (CSIR-IICT), Hyderabad 500007, India; Academy of Scientific and Innovative Research (AcSIR), Ghaziabad 201002, India.
• Sci. Total Environ. 2021 May 10; 768: 144704.

AbstractSARS-CoV-2 pandemic is having a devastating effect on human lives. Recent reports have shown that majority of the individuals recovered from COVID-19 have serious health complications, which is going to be a huge economic burden globally. Given the wide-spread transmission of SARS-CoV-2 it is almost impossible to test every individual in densely populated countries. Recent reports have shown that sewage-based surveillance can be used as holistic approach to understand the spread of the pandemic within a population or area. Here we have estimated the spread of SARS-CoV-2 in the city of Hyderabad, India, which is a home for nearly 10 million people. The sewage samples were collected from all the major sewage treatment plants (STPs) and were processed for detecting the viral genome using the standard Reverse Transcription Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) method. Interestingly, inlet samples of STPs were positive for SARS-CoV-2, while the outlets were negative, which indicates that the standard sewage treatment methods are efficient in eliminating the SARS-CoV-2 viral particles. Based on the detected viral gene copies per litre and viral particle shedding per individual, the total number of individuals exposed to SARS-CoV-2 was estimated. Through this study we suggest that sewage-based surveillance is an effective approach to study the infection dynamics, which helps in efficient management of the SARS-CoV-2 spread.Copyright © 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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