ABSTRACT
To date, the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in over 570 million cases and over 6 million deaths worldwide. Predominant clinical testing methods, though invaluable, may create an inaccurate depiction of COVID-19 prevalence due to inadequate access, testing, or most recently under-reporting because of at-home testing. These concerns have created a need for unbiased, community-level surveillance. Wastewater-based epidemiology has been used for previous public health threats, and more recently has been established as a complementary method of SARS-CoV-2 surveillance. Here we describe the application of wastewater surveillance for SARS-CoV-2 in two university campus communities located in rural Lincoln Parish, Louisiana. This cost-effective approach is especially well suited to rural areas where limited access to testing may worsen the spread of COVID-19 and quickly exhaust the capacity of local healthcare systems. Our work demonstrates that local universities can leverage scientific resources to advance public health equity in rural areas and enhance their community involvement.
Subject(s)
COVID-19 , Public Health , COVID-19/epidemiology , Humans , Pandemics , SARS-CoV-2 , Universities , Wastewater , Wastewater-Based Epidemiological MonitoringABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic has already triggered global health, economic, and social crises, clouding the sky of achieving the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development adopted by the United Nations (UN) in 2015 to improve human lives while protecting nature. Water, vital for all forms of life, is essential to public health and human wellbeing as well as to smooth the path of ending poverty through food and energy security. Hence, we argued that global water security can serve as a shining star to guide policymakers through the overwhelming task of achieving the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, currently hindered by the coronavirus outbreak. To quickly attain global water security while taking the accelerators of Sustainable Development Goal 6 (SDG6 “Clean Water and Sanitation”) into account, this study proposed different water-related interventions. To successfully implement the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development after the coronavirus pandemic, we call for immediate and sustainable interventions for not only acting rapidly towards achieving water security and SDG6 around the world but also supporting the ongoing fight against COVID-19 and being prepared for possible future pandemics.
ABSTRACT
An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.