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. 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).

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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

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