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
. 2021 Apr:195:110831.
doi: 10.1016/j.envres.2021.110831. Epub 2021 Feb 12.

Surveillance of Wastewater for Early Epidemic Prediction (SWEEP): Environmental and health security perspectives in the post COVID-19 Anthropocene

Satya Brat Tiwari  1 , Pallavi Gahlot  1 , Vinay Kumar Tyagi  2 , Liang Zhang  3 , Yan Zhou  4 , A A Kazmi  1 , Manish Kumar  5
Affiliations

Surveillance of Wastewater for Early Epidemic Prediction (SWEEP): Environmental and health security perspectives in the post COVID-19 Anthropocene

Satya Brat Tiwari et al. Environ Res. 2021 Apr.

Abstract

The present work summarizes the major research findings related to wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) study of COVID-19 and puts forward a conceptual framework, termed as "Surveillance of Wastewater for Early Epidemic Prediction (SWEEP)" for implementation of WBE. SWEEP framework is likely to tackle few practical issues related to WBE and simultaneously proposes refinements to the approach for better outcome and efficiency to save precious lives around the globe. It is observed that the present pandemic offers an opportunity for SWEEP to get included in routine urban water management to put the humankind at front to stop such pandemic in future or at least be prepared to fight against it. With global collaboration, SWEEP can be fine-tuned to meet diverse needs, making the present and future generations resilient to future viral outbreaks. Recent WBE studies conducted to check for the presence of SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater revealed that raw sewage samples tested positive to PCR-based assays while the treated samples showed absence of viral titers. Moreover, the lockdown had a positive impact on decreasing the viral loading in sewage. The proposed SWEEP protocol has an advantage over testifying individuals for predicting the stage of pandemic.

Keywords: COVID-19; Early warning system; PCR-based assays; SARS-CoV-2; Surveillance of wastewater for early epidemic prediction (SWEEP).

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 reported in this paper.

Figures

Image 1
Graphical abstract
Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Transmission of SARS-CoV-2 and precautionary measures for COVID-19 along with its structure and genomic sequence. Also, survival of SARS-CoV-2 on different surfaces/medium (Chin et al., 2020; Nghiem et al., 2020).
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Schematic of wastewater based epidemiological surveillance (Source: Suthar et al., 2021; Randazzo et al., 2020b) Reprinted with permission from Elsevier.
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
SWEEP- Surveillance of wastewater for early epidemic prediction.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. Ahmed F., Ahmed N., Pissarides C., Stiglitz J. Why inequality could spread COVID-19. Lancet Public Heal. 2020;5 doi: 10.1016/S2468-2667(20)30085-2. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Ahmed W., Angel N., Edson J., Bibby K., Bivins A., O'Brien J.W., Choi P.M., Kitajima M., Simpson S.L., Li J., Tscharke B., Verhagen R., Smith W.J.M., Zaugg J., Dierens L., Hugenholtz P., Thomas K.V., Mueller J.F. First confirmed detection of SARS-CoV-2 in untreated wastewater in Australia: a proof of concept for the wastewater surveillance of COVID-19 in the community. Sci. Total Environ. 2020;728:138764. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.138764. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Ahmed W., Bertsch P.M., Bibby K., Haramoto E., Hewitt J., Huygens F., Gyawali P., Korajkic A., Riddell S., Sherchan S.P., Simpson S.L., Sirikanchana K., Symonds E.M., Verhagen R., Vasan S.S., Kitajima M., Bivins A. Decay of SARS-CoV-2 and surrogate murine hepatitis virus RNA in untreated wastewater to inform application in wastewater-based epidemiology. Environ. Res. 2020;191:110092. doi: 10.1016/j.envres.2020.110092. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Albastaki A., Naji M., Lootah R., Almeheiri R., Almulla H., Almarri I., Alreyami A., Aden A., Alghafri R. First confirmed detection of SARS-COV-2 in untreated municipal and aircraft wastewater in Dubai, UAE: the use of wastewater based epidemiology as an early warning tool to monitor the prevalence of COVID-19. Sci. Total Environ. 2020;143350 doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.143350. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Alpaslan Kocamemi B., Kurt H., Sait A., Sarac F., Saatci A.M., Pakdemirli B. SARS-CoV-2 detection in istanbul wastewater treatment plant sludges. medRxiv. 2020 doi: 10.1101/2020.05.12.20099358. - DOI

Publication types