Water and wastewater digital surveillance for monitoring and early detection of the COVID-19 hotspot: industry 4.0

Abstract

There are a high number of COVID-19 cases per capita in the world that goes undetected including clinical diseases compatible with COVID-19. While the presence of the COVID-19 in untreated drinking water is possible, it is yet to be detected in the drinking-water supplies. COVID-19 viral fragments have been found in excrete, this call for wastewater monitoring and analysis (wastewater surveillance) of the potential health risk. This raises concern about the potential of the SARS-CoV-2 transmission via the water systems. The economic limits on the medical screening for the SARS-CoV-2 or COVID-19 worldwide are turning to wastewater-based epidemiology as great potential tools for assessing and management of the COVID-19 pandemic. Surveillance and tracking of the pathogens in the wastewater are key to the early warning system and public health strategy monitoring of the COVID-19. Currently, RT-qPCR assays is been developed for SARS-CoV-2 RNA specimen clinical testing and detection in the water system. Convectional wastewater treatment methods and disinfection are expected to eradicate the SAR-CoV-2. Chlorine, UV radiation, ozone, chloramine is been used to inactivate and disinfect the water treatment system against the SARS-CoV-2. Water management and design of the water infrastructure require major changes to accommodate climate change, water cycle, reimaging of digitalization, infrastructure and privacy protection. The water digital revolution, biosensors and nanoscale, contact tracing, knowledge management can accelerate with disruption of the COVID-19 outbreak (water-health-digital nexus).

Keywords: Epidemiology; Monitoring; Pathogens; RT-qPCR; SARS-CoV-2 RNA; Wastewater surveillance.

Fig. 1

Potential of the wastewater surveillance in monitoring for the COVID-19 in water, wastewater system and public health (Farkas et al. 2020)

Fig. 2

COVID-19 possibility of contamination in the rural and urban water cycle with the potential of human exposure to the SARS-COV-2 (Bhowmick et al. 2020)

Fig. 3

Concentration of the SAR-COV-2 RNA in sewage water at Amsterdam, Netherland (March to Aug 2020) (Medema et al. 2020)

Fig. 4

Virion structure of the SARS-COV-2 (W.R.C. 2020)

Fig. 5

Model for the disinfection of the wastewater from the hospital (Wang et al. 2020)

Fig. 6

A summarized model of the SAR-CoV-2 in a smart city (Hashem et al. 2020)

Fig. 7

Water digital revolution encounter with COVID-19 Pandemic (Poch et al. 2020)

Fig. 8

Application of artificial intelligence (machine and deep learning) in combatting COVID-19 (Hashem et al. 2020)

Fig. 9

Integration of the smart water system with water digitalization tools (Mounce 2020)

Fig. 10

Water intelligence monitoring system (Han et al. 2018)

Fig. 11

Approach to the water and wastewater management using the digital twin of the physical replica system (DHI 2020)

Fig. 12

Wastewater multi-layer cyber-physical system (CPS) based on the supervised structure (Ferretti et al. 2020)

Fig. 13

COVID-19 contact tracing using a mobile app (IOS and Android) with consideration of the privacy and trade-off (Abeler et al. ; Cho et al. ; Ferretti et al. 2020)

Fig. 14

Control methodologies and mathematical modelling of the tracking trajectory robot for maintaining social distance (Qureshi et al. 2020)