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When it comes to wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) for #COVID surveillance, people ask the same question: How come it hasn’t been used before? Well, it has been. Here are a few examples how. 1/13
Wastewater monitoring has been key to detect #poliovirus. Similar to COVID, most polio cases are subclinical, and the virus detection in clinical samples is often a sign of an already ongoing outbreak. 2/13
However, using WBE, Deshpande et al (2002) found wild-type polio in sewage three months before clinical cases in India. 3/13 https://aem.asm.org/content/69/5/2919.short
WBE is also recommended by the WHO and they provided detailed guidelines on how to use environmental monitoring for polio surveillance. It has been used in countries affected by the virus. 4/13
https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/67854/;jsessionid=C38BD990881F3AE247707EFC8F1AD457?sequence=1
https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/67854/;jsessionid=C38BD990881F3AE247707EFC8F1AD457?sequence=1
Sewage monitoring works for other #enteric viruses as well. For example, Miura et al (2016) found that hepatitis E virus can be detected in sewage with infection rates as low as 1%. 5/13 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12560-016-9241-9
Our research group also found peaks in #norovirus concentrations in wastewater during local gastroenteritis outbreaks in North Wales. 6/13 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969718311951
Surely, the first SARS-CoV responsible for epidemics in 2003 was also found in wastewater, however, WBE was not applied back then. See the work of Wang et al (2006) as an example. 7/13 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0166093405001503
But why stop at pathogens? Wastewater surveillance can be used to assess alcohol, tobacco and drug use as well. See review from Xagoraraki et al (2020) for details. 8/13 https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-17819-2_5
And Feng et al’s review (2018) on wastewater and drug abuse. 9/13 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11430-017-9129-x
There are also many, many papers, preprints and reviews now on how WBE can be a powerful tool to understand the spread of SARS-CoV-2. See the COVID-19 WBE Collaborative website for full list 10/13 https://www.covid19wbec.org/
So far, our research group contributed to the field with an opinion on WBE with a summary on the methods used in the early studies. 11/13 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2468584420300404
And review on the potential of faecal-oral transmission. Spoiler: transmission unlikely. 12/13 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969720348932
Again, these are just a few examples of papers I like and my take on the matter. It is far from a comprehensive list of contributions. I am happy to share more if anyone’s interested, though! 13/13
