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Uncertainties in estimating SARS-CoV-2 prevalence by wastewater-based epidemiology
Wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) is a promising approach for estimating population-wide COVID-19 prevalence through detection of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) RNA in wastewater. However, various methodological challenges associated with WBE would affect the accuracy...
Autores principales: | , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Elsevier B.V.
2021
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7896122/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33642938 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cej.2021.129039 |
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author | Li, Xuan Zhang, Shuxin Shi, Jiahua Luby, Stephen P. Jiang, Guangming |
author_facet | Li, Xuan Zhang, Shuxin Shi, Jiahua Luby, Stephen P. Jiang, Guangming |
author_sort | Li, Xuan |
collection | PubMed |
description | Wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) is a promising approach for estimating population-wide COVID-19 prevalence through detection of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) RNA in wastewater. However, various methodological challenges associated with WBE would affect the accuracy of prevalence estimation. To date, the overall uncertainty of WBE and the impact of each step on the prevalence estimation are largely unknown. This study divided the WBE approach into five steps (i.e., virus shedding; in-sewer transportation; sampling and storage; analysis of SARS-CoV-2 RNA concentration in wastewater; back-estimation) and further summarized and quantified the uncertainties associated with each step through a systematic review. Although the shedding of SARS-CoV-2 RNA varied greatly between COVID-19 positive patients, with more than 10 infected persons in the catchment area, the uncertainty caused by the excretion rate became limited for the prevalence estimation. Using a high-frequency flow-proportional sampling and estimating the prevalence through actual water usage data significantly reduced the overall uncertainties to around 20–40% (relative standard deviation, RSD). And under such a scenario, the analytical uncertainty of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in wastewater was the dominant factor. This highlights the importance of using surrogate viruses as internal or external standards during the wastewater analysis, and the need for further improvement on analytical approaches to minimize the analytical uncertainty. This study supports the application of WBE as a complementary surveillance strategy for monitoring COVID-19 prevalence and provides methodological improvements and suggestions to enhance the reliability for future studies. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-7896122 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | Elsevier B.V. |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-78961222021-02-22 Uncertainties in estimating SARS-CoV-2 prevalence by wastewater-based epidemiology Li, Xuan Zhang, Shuxin Shi, Jiahua Luby, Stephen P. Jiang, Guangming Chem Eng J Article Wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) is a promising approach for estimating population-wide COVID-19 prevalence through detection of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) RNA in wastewater. However, various methodological challenges associated with WBE would affect the accuracy of prevalence estimation. To date, the overall uncertainty of WBE and the impact of each step on the prevalence estimation are largely unknown. This study divided the WBE approach into five steps (i.e., virus shedding; in-sewer transportation; sampling and storage; analysis of SARS-CoV-2 RNA concentration in wastewater; back-estimation) and further summarized and quantified the uncertainties associated with each step through a systematic review. Although the shedding of SARS-CoV-2 RNA varied greatly between COVID-19 positive patients, with more than 10 infected persons in the catchment area, the uncertainty caused by the excretion rate became limited for the prevalence estimation. Using a high-frequency flow-proportional sampling and estimating the prevalence through actual water usage data significantly reduced the overall uncertainties to around 20–40% (relative standard deviation, RSD). And under such a scenario, the analytical uncertainty of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in wastewater was the dominant factor. This highlights the importance of using surrogate viruses as internal or external standards during the wastewater analysis, and the need for further improvement on analytical approaches to minimize the analytical uncertainty. This study supports the application of WBE as a complementary surveillance strategy for monitoring COVID-19 prevalence and provides methodological improvements and suggestions to enhance the reliability for future studies. Elsevier B.V. 2021-07-01 2021-02-20 /pmc/articles/PMC7896122/ /pubmed/33642938 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cej.2021.129039 Text en © 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the company's public news and information website. Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre remains active. |
spellingShingle | Article Li, Xuan Zhang, Shuxin Shi, Jiahua Luby, Stephen P. Jiang, Guangming Uncertainties in estimating SARS-CoV-2 prevalence by wastewater-based epidemiology |
title | Uncertainties in estimating SARS-CoV-2 prevalence by wastewater-based epidemiology |
title_full | Uncertainties in estimating SARS-CoV-2 prevalence by wastewater-based epidemiology |
title_fullStr | Uncertainties in estimating SARS-CoV-2 prevalence by wastewater-based epidemiology |
title_full_unstemmed | Uncertainties in estimating SARS-CoV-2 prevalence by wastewater-based epidemiology |
title_short | Uncertainties in estimating SARS-CoV-2 prevalence by wastewater-based epidemiology |
title_sort | uncertainties in estimating sars-cov-2 prevalence by wastewater-based epidemiology |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7896122/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33642938 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cej.2021.129039 |
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