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Lookup NU author(s): Marcos Quintela-Baluja, Professor David GrahamORCiD
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
© 2020The presence of SARS-CoV-2 in the feces of infected patients and wastewater has drawn attention, not only to the possibility of fecal-oral transmission but also to the use of wastewater as an epidemiological tool. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted problems in evaluating the epidemiological scope of the disease using classical surveillance approaches, due to a lack of diagnostic capacity, and their application to only a small proportion of the population. As in previous pandemics, statistics, particularly the proportion of the population infected, are believed to be widely underestimated. Furthermore, analysis of only clinical samples cannot predict outbreaks in a timely manner or easily capture asymptomatic carriers. Threfore, community-scale surveillance, including wastewater-based epidemiology, can bridge the broader community and the clinic, becoming a valuable indirect epidemiological prediction tool for SARS-CoV-2 and other pandemic viruses. This article summarizes current knowledge and discusses the critical factors for implementing wastewater-based epidemiology of COVID-19.
Author(s): Polo D, Quintela-Baluja M, Corbishley A, Jones DL, Singer AC, Graham DW, Romalde JL
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Water Research
Year: 2020
Volume: 186
Print publication date: 01/11/2020
Online publication date: 09/09/2020
Acceptance date: 06/09/2020
Date deposited: 16/11/2020
ISSN (print): 0043-1354
ISSN (electronic): 1879-2448
Publisher: Elsevier Ltd
URL: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.watres.2020.116404
DOI: 10.1016/j.watres.2020.116404
PubMed id: 32942178
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