COVID-19 surveillance via wastewater:Introduction of wastewater-based epidemiology / 西安交通大学学报(医学版)

ABSTRACT

Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 global pandemic in 2019, monitoring COVID-19 infection status and trend through wastewater, known as wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE), has been widely used in many countries and regions. WBE consists of five steps:wastewater sample collection, viral concentration, viral nucleic acid extraction, quantification of virus using quantitative RT-PCR, and dissemination of the wastewater surveillance results. This method could be used for early warning of COVID-19 outbreak in a population, monitoring COVID-19 distributions and epidemic trend, prediction of COVID-19 prevalence rate, understanding of temporal trend of SARS-COV-2 variants, and simultaneous surveillance of multiple pathogens. WBE and clinical surveillance can be used concurrently and the former is a good complement to the latter.