SARS-CoV-2 known and unknowns, implications for the water sector and wastewater-based epidemiology to support national responses worldwide: early review of global experiences with the COVID-19 pandemic

Wastewater surveillance of pathogens may be a useful tool to help determine whether clinical surveillance of disease is effective or inadequate due to under-reporting and under-detection. In addition, tracking of pathogen concentrations over time could potentially provide a measure of the effectiveness of public health control measures and the impact of the gradual relaxation of these controls. Analysis of wastewater using quantitative molecular methods offers a real-time measure of infections in the community, and thus is expected to provide a more sensitive and rapid indication of changes in infection rates before such effects become detectable by clinical health surveillance. Models may help to back-calculate wastewater prevalence to population prevalence or to correct pathogen counts for wastewater catchment-specific and temporal effects. They may also help to design the wastewater sampling strategy. This article provides a brief summary of the history of pathogen wastewater surveillance to help set the context for the SARS-CoV-2 wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) programmes currently being undertaken globally.

Automated summary

Wastewater surveillance of pathogens is a useful tool to assess the effectiveness of disease monitoring, providing a sensitive and rapid indicator of infection rate changes. Models can be used to back-calculate wastewater prevalence to population prevalence, as well as help design wastewater sampling strategies.