Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2021 Jan:134:116125.
doi: 10.1016/j.trac.2020.116125. Epub 2020 Nov 20.

Analytical methodologies for the detection of SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater: Protocols and future perspectives

Nikiforos Alygizakis  1 , Athina N Markou  1 , Nikolaos I Rousis  1 , Aikaterini Galani  1 , Margaritis Avgeris  2 , Panagiotis G Adamopoulos  3 , Andreas Scorilas  3 , Evi S Lianidou  1 , Dimitrios Paraskevis  4 , Sotirios Tsiodras  5 , Athanassios Tsakris  6 , Meletios-Athanasios Dimopoulos  7 , Nikolaos S Thomaidis  1
Affiliations
Review

Analytical methodologies for the detection of SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater: Protocols and future perspectives

Nikiforos Alygizakis et al. Trends Analyt Chem. 2021 Jan.

Abstract

In March 2020 the World Health Organization announced a pandemic outbreak. Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is the causative pathogen for the coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19) pandemic. The authorities worldwide use clinical science to identify infected people, but this approach is not able to track all symptomatic and asymptomatic cases due to limited sampling capacity of the testing laboratories. This drawback is eliminated by the Wastewater-Based Epidemiology (WBE) approach. In this review, we summarized the peer-reviewed published literature (available as of September 28, 2020), in the field of WBE. The commonly used steps (sampling, storage, concentration, isolation, detection) of the analytical protocols were identified. The potential limitations of each stage of the protocols and good practices were discussed. Finally, new methods for the efficient detection of SARS-CoV-2 were proposed.

Keywords: COVID-19 pandemic; Concentration; Influent wastewater; Isolation; Molecular methods detection; RT-qPCR; Sampling; Symptomatic and asymptomatic; Temperature storage; Wastewater-based epidemiology.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

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

References

    1. Zhu N., Zhang D., Wang W., Li X., Yang B., Song J., Zhao X., Huang B., Shi W., Lu R., Niu P., Zhan F., Ma X., Wang D., Xu W., Wu G., Gao G.F., Tan W., China Novel Coronavirus I., Research T. A novel coronavirus from patients with pneumonia in China, 2019. N. Engl. J. Med. 2020;382:727–733. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Gorbalenya A.E., Baker S.C., Baric R.S., de Groot R.J., Drosten C., Gulyaeva A.A., Haagmans B.L., Lauber C., Leontovich A.M., Neuman B.W., Penzar D., Perlman S., Poon L.L.M., Samborskiy D.V., Sidorov I.A., Sola I., Ziebuhr J., Coronaviridae Study V. Group of the International Committee on Taxonomy of, the species Severe acute respiratory syndrome-related coronavirus: classifying 2019-nCoV and naming it SARS-CoV-2. Nature Microbiology. 2020;5:536–544. - PMC - PubMed
    1. World Health Organization WHO announces COVID-19 outbreak a pandemic. 2020. https://www.euro.who.int/en/health-topics/health-emergencies/coronavirus... Last accessed 29 September 2020.
    1. Li Z., Yi Y., Luo X., Xiong N., Liu Y., Li S., Sun R., Wang Y., Hu B., Chen W., Zhang Y., Wang J., Huang B., Lin Y., Yang J., Cai W., Wang X., Cheng J., Chen Z., Sun K., Pan W., Zhan Z., Chen L., Ye F. Development and clinical application of a rapid IgM-IgG combined antibody test for SARS-CoV-2 infection diagnosis. J. Med. Virol. 2020 doi: 10.1002/jmv.25727. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Zhang D., Ling H., Huang X., Li J., Li W., Yi C., Zhang T., Jiang Y., He Y., Deng S., Zhang X., Wang X., Liu Y., Li G., Qu J. Potential spreading risks and disinfection challenges of medical wastewater by the presence of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) viral RNA in septic tanks of Fangcang Hospital. Sci. Total Environ. 2020;741:140445. - PMC - PubMed