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. 2021 Feb 10;755(Pt 2):143226.
doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.143226. Epub 2020 Oct 28.

Detection of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in hospital wastewater from a low COVID-19 disease prevalence area

José Gonçalves  1 , Tom Koritnik  2 , Verica Mioč  2 , Marija Trkov  2 , Maja Bolješič  2 , Nataša Berginc  2 , Katarina Prosenc  2 , Tadeja Kotar  3 , Metka Paragi  2
Affiliations

Detection of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in hospital wastewater from a low COVID-19 disease prevalence area

José Gonçalves et al. Sci Total Environ. .

Abstract

Previous studies on SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV reported the detection of viral RNA in the stool of both symptomatic and asymptomatic individuals. These clinical observations suggest that municipal and hospital wastewater from affected communities may contain SARS-CoV-2 RNA. Recent studies have also reported the presence of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in human feces. Wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) is a promising approach to understand the prevalence of viruses in a given catchment population, as wastewater contains viruses from symptomatic and asymptomatic individuals. The current study reports the first detection of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in untreated wastewater in Slovenia. Two sizes of centrifugal filters were tested: 30 kDa and 10 kDA AMICON® Ultra-15 Centrifugal Filters, where 10 kDA resulted in a higher concentration factor and higher recovery efficiency. The results in hospital wastewater show that WBE can be used for monitoring COVID -19 and could be applied in municipal wastewater treatment plants as a potential complementary tool for public health monitoring at population level.

Keywords: COVID-19; SARS-CoV-2; Virology; Wastewater; Wastewater-based epidemiology; qPCR.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Figures

Unlabelled Image
Graphical abstract
Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Correlation between Cq values and Log10 dilutions of SARS-CoV-2 RNA positive sample for A) RdRP gene assay and B) E gene assay. The equation and correlation coefficient (R2) for the standard curve are given. Plotted Cq values are average values from triplicate measurements and error bars show the standard deviation from the average and may be hidden by the symbols.
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Number of hospitalized patients diagnosed with COVID-19 and the hypothetical number of copies for RdRP and E gene assays.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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