The Science of the total environment
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Sci. Total Environ. · Mar 2021
First confirmed detection of SARS-COV-2 in untreated municipal and aircraft wastewater in Dubai, UAE: The use of wastewater based epidemiology as an early warning tool to monitor the prevalence of COVID-19.
Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome - Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) emerged in Wuhan, China and spread to more than 114 countries resulting in a pandemic, which was declared by the WHO in March 2020. Tracking the spread of the virus raised a main concern in every country. Many researches proved the presence of SARS-CoV-2 in stool samples of patients, where the genes of this virus gave a positive signal several days prior to the occurrence of symptoms. ⋯ The presence of SARS-CoV-2 genes was confirmed using TaqPath™ Covid-19 RT-PCR kit, which targets ORF1ab, N gene and S gene. This project shows the significance of utilizing wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) in monitoring the prevalence of various infectious diseases such as SARS-CoV-2, which can assist the decision makers to determine the level of precautionary measures according to the areas of the outbreak. With this in mind, pricewise, WBE is considered cost-effective when comparing to clinical nasal swabs.
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Sci. Total Environ. · Mar 2021
ReviewWastewater surveillance for SARS-CoV-2: Lessons learnt from recent studies to define future applications.
Wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) is successful in the detection of the spread of SARS-CoV-2. This review examines the methods used and results of recent studies on the quantification of SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater. WBE becomes essential, especially with virus transmission path uncertainty, limitations on the number of clinical tests that could be conducted, and a relatively long period for infected people to show symptoms. ⋯ Correlating the slope of the relationship between the number of gene copies vs. the cumulative number of infections normalized to the total population served with the average new cases, suggests that qPCR results could help estimating the number of new infections. The correlation is improved when a lag period was introduced to account for asymptomatic infections. Based on lessons learnt from recent studies, it is recommended that future applications should consider the following: 1) ensuring occupational safety in managing sewage collection and processing, 2) evaluating the effectiveness of greywater disinfection, 3) measuring viral RNA decay due to biological and chemical activities during collection and treatment, 4) assessing the effectiveness of digital PCR, and 5) conducting large scale international studies that follow standardized protocols.
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Sci. Total Environ. · Mar 2021
Detection of SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater in Japan during a COVID-19 outbreak.
The presence of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) in wastewater samples has been documented in several countries. Wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) is potentially effective for early warning of a COVID-19 outbreak. In this study, presence of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in wastewater samples was investigated and was compared with the number of the confirmed COVID-19 cases in the study area during COVID-19 outbreak in Japan. ⋯ The detection frequency increased when the number of total confirmed SARS-CoV-2 cases in 100,000 people exceeded 10 in each prefecture; however, SARS-CoV-2 could also be detected at a low frequency even when the number was below 1.0. SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater could be detected in the early stage of the epidemic, even if the number of confirmed cases potentially underestimates the actual numbers of cases. This suggests that WBE approach can potentially act as an early warning of COVID-19 outbreaks in Japan.