Wastewater Detection of COVID-19

When faced with a pandemic such as SARS-Coronavirus-2 (SAR-CoV-2), the virus responsible for COVID-19,timely risk assessment and action are required to prevent public health impacts to entire communities.Because infected individuals may not have access to testing or may be asymptomatic and contraction canmean death, a proactive approach to detect the virus is needed to develop public health strategy to mitigatevirus spread.

Recent studies have detected SAR-CoV-2 genetic material in sewage and demonstrate apositive correlation between the concentration of viral markers and reported cases1-5.

The CoronavirusSewershed Surveillance Project (CSSP) is a collaborative effort to monitor sewersheds for genetic indicators ofCOVID-19 in wastewater to provide additional, population-level information about virus circulation that is notcaptured by clinical testing.

Untreated wastewater (influent) samples are screened weekly from selectsewersheds and targeted micro-sewersheds for detection and “true” prevalence.

Congregate facilities provideunique opportunities for study because they are controlled populations where the precise number and timing ofinfections can be defined.

Our team will utilize detailed monitoring of congregate facilities to define the preciseper patient contribution and longevity of SARS-COV-2 RNA to wastewater by 1) increasing the number offacilities tested, 2) altering the frequency at which samples are collected, and 3) comparing sewershed datacollected to clinical patient case data.Although SARS-COV-2 contribution/patient varies among communities, there have been clear outliercommunities that produce little or no genetic material in the wastewater despite the presence of knownoutbreaks.

The reason for this lost signal is not known, so our team will define factors that contribute to SARS-COV-2 signal suppression in wastewater by 1) defining the physical nature of the genetic material in thesewershed to better understand the types of factors that could suppress signal, 2) expanding testing withinsewersheds with suppressed signal as well as from additional facilities with similar population and industrydemographics as those with suppressed signal to narrow the sources of signal suppression, 3) performingexhaustive chemical characterization comparing wastewater from locations that are suppressed to those thatare not to identify candidate compounds that could be causing suppression, and 4) obtaining or generatingcandidate inhibitors and test their ability to suppress signal from viral genetic material in a controlledexperimental setting.