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Monitoring SARS-CoV-2 in municipal wastewater to evaluate the success of lockdown measures for controlling COVID-19 in the UK

SARS-CoV-2 and the resulting COVID-19 pandemic represents one of the greatest recent threats to human health, wellbeing and economic growth. Wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) of human viruses can be a useful tool for population-scale monitoring of SARS-CoV-2 prevalence and epidemiology to help pre...

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Autores principales: Hillary, Luke S., Farkas, Kata, Maher, Kathryn H., Lucaci, Anita, Thorpe, Jamie, Distaso, Marco A., Gaze, William H., Paterson, Steve, Burke, Terry, Connor, Thomas R., McDonald, James E., Malham, Shelagh K., Jones, David L.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Elsevier Ltd. 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8105641/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34058486
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.watres.2021.117214
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author Hillary, Luke S.
Farkas, Kata
Maher, Kathryn H.
Lucaci, Anita
Thorpe, Jamie
Distaso, Marco A.
Gaze, William H.
Paterson, Steve
Burke, Terry
Connor, Thomas R.
McDonald, James E.
Malham, Shelagh K.
Jones, David L.
author_facet Hillary, Luke S.
Farkas, Kata
Maher, Kathryn H.
Lucaci, Anita
Thorpe, Jamie
Distaso, Marco A.
Gaze, William H.
Paterson, Steve
Burke, Terry
Connor, Thomas R.
McDonald, James E.
Malham, Shelagh K.
Jones, David L.
author_sort Hillary, Luke S.
collection PubMed
description SARS-CoV-2 and the resulting COVID-19 pandemic represents one of the greatest recent threats to human health, wellbeing and economic growth. Wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) of human viruses can be a useful tool for population-scale monitoring of SARS-CoV-2 prevalence and epidemiology to help prevent further spread of the disease, particularly within urban centres. Here, we present a longitudinal analysis (March–July 2020) of SARS-CoV-2 RNA prevalence in sewage across six major urban centres in the UK (total population equivalent 3 million) by q(RT-)PCR and viral genome sequencing. Our results demonstrate that levels of SARS-CoV-2 RNA generally correlated with the abundance of clinical cases recorded within the community in large urban centres, with a marked decline in SARS-CoV-2 RNA abundance following the implementation of lockdown measures. The strength of this association was weaker in areas with lower confirmed COVID-19 case numbers. Further, sequence analysis of SARS-CoV-2 from wastewater suggested that multiple genetically distinct clusters were co-circulating in the local populations covered by our sample sites, and that the genetic variants observed in wastewater reflected similar SNPs observed in contemporaneous samples from cases tested in clinical diagnostic laboratories. We demonstrate how WBE can be used for both community-level detection and tracking of SARS-CoV-2 and other virus’ prevalence, and can inform public health policy decisions. Although, greater understanding of the factors that affect SARS-CoV-2 RNA concentration in wastewater are needed for the full integration of WBE data into outbreak surveillance. In conclusion, our results lend support to the use of routine WBE for monitoring of SARS-CoV-2 and other human pathogenic viruses circulating in the population and assessment of the effectiveness of disease control measures.
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spelling pubmed-81056412021-05-10 Monitoring SARS-CoV-2 in municipal wastewater to evaluate the success of lockdown measures for controlling COVID-19 in the UK Hillary, Luke S. Farkas, Kata Maher, Kathryn H. Lucaci, Anita Thorpe, Jamie Distaso, Marco A. Gaze, William H. Paterson, Steve Burke, Terry Connor, Thomas R. McDonald, James E. Malham, Shelagh K. Jones, David L. Water Res Article SARS-CoV-2 and the resulting COVID-19 pandemic represents one of the greatest recent threats to human health, wellbeing and economic growth. Wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) of human viruses can be a useful tool for population-scale monitoring of SARS-CoV-2 prevalence and epidemiology to help prevent further spread of the disease, particularly within urban centres. Here, we present a longitudinal analysis (March–July 2020) of SARS-CoV-2 RNA prevalence in sewage across six major urban centres in the UK (total population equivalent 3 million) by q(RT-)PCR and viral genome sequencing. Our results demonstrate that levels of SARS-CoV-2 RNA generally correlated with the abundance of clinical cases recorded within the community in large urban centres, with a marked decline in SARS-CoV-2 RNA abundance following the implementation of lockdown measures. The strength of this association was weaker in areas with lower confirmed COVID-19 case numbers. Further, sequence analysis of SARS-CoV-2 from wastewater suggested that multiple genetically distinct clusters were co-circulating in the local populations covered by our sample sites, and that the genetic variants observed in wastewater reflected similar SNPs observed in contemporaneous samples from cases tested in clinical diagnostic laboratories. We demonstrate how WBE can be used for both community-level detection and tracking of SARS-CoV-2 and other virus’ prevalence, and can inform public health policy decisions. Although, greater understanding of the factors that affect SARS-CoV-2 RNA concentration in wastewater are needed for the full integration of WBE data into outbreak surveillance. In conclusion, our results lend support to the use of routine WBE for monitoring of SARS-CoV-2 and other human pathogenic viruses circulating in the population and assessment of the effectiveness of disease control measures. Elsevier Ltd. 2021-07-15 2021-05-08 /pmc/articles/PMC8105641/ /pubmed/34058486 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.watres.2021.117214 Text en © 2021 Elsevier Ltd. 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
Hillary, Luke S.
Farkas, Kata
Maher, Kathryn H.
Lucaci, Anita
Thorpe, Jamie
Distaso, Marco A.
Gaze, William H.
Paterson, Steve
Burke, Terry
Connor, Thomas R.
McDonald, James E.
Malham, Shelagh K.
Jones, David L.
Monitoring SARS-CoV-2 in municipal wastewater to evaluate the success of lockdown measures for controlling COVID-19 in the UK
title Monitoring SARS-CoV-2 in municipal wastewater to evaluate the success of lockdown measures for controlling COVID-19 in the UK
title_full Monitoring SARS-CoV-2 in municipal wastewater to evaluate the success of lockdown measures for controlling COVID-19 in the UK
title_fullStr Monitoring SARS-CoV-2 in municipal wastewater to evaluate the success of lockdown measures for controlling COVID-19 in the UK
title_full_unstemmed Monitoring SARS-CoV-2 in municipal wastewater to evaluate the success of lockdown measures for controlling COVID-19 in the UK
title_short Monitoring SARS-CoV-2 in municipal wastewater to evaluate the success of lockdown measures for controlling COVID-19 in the UK
title_sort monitoring sars-cov-2 in municipal wastewater to evaluate the success of lockdown measures for controlling covid-19 in the uk
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8105641/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34058486
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.watres.2021.117214
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