Preface: How hydrologists helped respond to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic

ABSTRACT

There are a range of spatial scales addressed in the papers, from the individual building scale to the cargo ship (Coxon et al., 'Exploring opportunities for sewage testing on cargo ships as a tool to screen seafarers for COVID-19'), subcatchment to sewershed (Nicoll et al., 'Neighbourhood-scale wastewater-based epidemiology for COVID-19'), and city to national (Gilpin et al., A pilot study of wastewater monitoring for SARS-CoV-2 in New Zealand' and Trowsdale et al., 'Establishing New Zealand's national pathogen surveillance system using wastewater-based epidemiology');and all the papers make use of the international literature to provide context for what is a global pandemic. Marrying such information with environmental water samples collected on a daily or weekly basis is problematic. Repurposing data also raises important ethical questions of ownership, confidentiality and responsibility that need to be asked to ensure what we scientists do is both good and right (Price and Trowsdale, 'The ethics of wastewater surveillance for public health').