TY - JOUR
T1 - Application of neighborhood-scale wastewater-based epidemiology in low COVID-19 incidence situations
AU - Oh, Chamteut
AU - Zhou, Aijia
AU - O'Brien, Kate
AU - Jamal, Yusuf
AU - Wennerdahl, Hayden
AU - Schmidt, Arthur R
AU - Shisler, Joanna L
AU - Jutla, Antarpreet
AU - Schmidt IV, Arthur R
AU - Keefer, Laura
AU - Brown, William M
AU - Nguyen, Thanh H
N1 - Funding Information:
We acknowledge the funding from the Grainger College of Engineering , the JUMP-ARCHES program of OSF Healthcare in conjunction with the University of Illinois , and the VinUni Illinois Smart Health Center . We thank Brad Bennett and Bruce Rabe at the Urbana-Champaign Sanitary District and Haley Turner and Travis Ramme at the Rantoul Wastewater Treatment Plant for providing us with influent wastewater. The authors also acknowledge Kip Stevenson for sampling deployment, and Yuqing Mao, Matthew Robert Loula, Aashna Patra, Kristin Joy Anderson, Mikayla Diedrick, Hubert Lyu, Hamza Elmahi Mohamed, Jad R Karajeh, Runsen Ning, Rui Fu, and Kyukyoung Kim for sewage sampling and processing. We also acknowledge Dr. Awais Vaid for guidance on sampling site selection.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 Elsevier B.V.
PY - 2022/12/15
Y1 - 2022/12/15
N2 - Wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE), an emerging approach for community-wide COVID-19 surveillance, was primarily characterized at large sewersheds such as wastewater treatment plants serving a large population. Although informed public health measures can be better implemented for a small population, WBE for neighborhood-scale sewersheds is less studied and not fully understood. This study applied WBE to seven neighborhood-scale sewersheds (average population of 1471) from January to November 2021. Community testing data showed an average of 0.004 % incidence rate in these sewersheds (97 % of monitoring periods reported two or fewer daily infections). In 92 % of sewage samples, SARS-CoV-2 N gene fragments were below the limit of quantification. We statistically determined 10-2.6 as the threshold of the SARS-CoV-2 N gene concentration normalized to pepper mild mottle virus (N/PMMOV) to alert high COVID-19 incidence rate in the studied sewershed. This threshold of N/PMMOV identified neighborhood-scale outbreaks (COVID-19 incidence rate higher than 0.2 %) with 82 % sensitivity and 51 % specificity. Importantly, neighborhood-scale WBE can discern local outbreaks that would not otherwise be identified by city-scale WBE. Our findings suggest that neighborhood-scale WBE is an effective community-wide disease surveillance tool when COVID-19 incidence is maintained at a low level.
AB - Wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE), an emerging approach for community-wide COVID-19 surveillance, was primarily characterized at large sewersheds such as wastewater treatment plants serving a large population. Although informed public health measures can be better implemented for a small population, WBE for neighborhood-scale sewersheds is less studied and not fully understood. This study applied WBE to seven neighborhood-scale sewersheds (average population of 1471) from January to November 2021. Community testing data showed an average of 0.004 % incidence rate in these sewersheds (97 % of monitoring periods reported two or fewer daily infections). In 92 % of sewage samples, SARS-CoV-2 N gene fragments were below the limit of quantification. We statistically determined 10-2.6 as the threshold of the SARS-CoV-2 N gene concentration normalized to pepper mild mottle virus (N/PMMOV) to alert high COVID-19 incidence rate in the studied sewershed. This threshold of N/PMMOV identified neighborhood-scale outbreaks (COVID-19 incidence rate higher than 0.2 %) with 82 % sensitivity and 51 % specificity. Importantly, neighborhood-scale WBE can discern local outbreaks that would not otherwise be identified by city-scale WBE. Our findings suggest that neighborhood-scale WBE is an effective community-wide disease surveillance tool when COVID-19 incidence is maintained at a low level.
KW - Wastewater-based epidemiology
KW - Low COVID-19 incidence
KW - SARS-CoV-2 variant-specific RT-qPCR assays
KW - Neighborhood-scale sewersheds
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U2 - 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.158448
DO - 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.158448
M3 - Article
C2 - 36063927
SN - 0048-9697
VL - 852
JO - Science of the Total Environment
JF - Science of the Total Environment
M1 - 158448
ER -