Applied and environmental microbiology
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Appl. Environ. Microbiol. · Mar 2021
Time Evolution of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) in Wastewater during the First Pandemic Wave of COVID-19 in the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona, Spain.
Two large wastewater treatment plants (WWTP), covering around 2.7 million inhabitants, which represents around 85% of the metropolitan area of Barcelona, were sampled before, during, and after the implementation of a complete lockdown. Five one-step reverse transcriptase quantitative PCR (RT-qPCR) assays, targeting the polymerase (IP2 and IP4), the envelope (E), and the nucleoprotein (N1 and N2) genome regions, were employed for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) RNA detection in 24-h composite wastewater samples concentrated by polyethylene glycol (PEG) precipitation. SARS-CoV-2 was detected in a sewage sample collected 41 days ahead of the declaration of the first COVID-19 case. ⋯ In addition, SARS-CoV-2 occurrence in wastewater evidenced the efficacy of the adopted lockdown measures on the circulation of the virus. Health authorities profited from WBE to complement other inputs and adopt rapid and adequate measures to mitigate the effects of the pandemic. For example, sentinel surveillance of specific sewers helped to locate COVID-19 hot spots and to conduct massive numbers of RT-PCR tests among the population.