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
. 2023 Jan 20;857(Pt 1):159188.
doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2022.159188. Epub 2022 Oct 4.

Predicting COVID-19 cases using SARS-CoV-2 RNA in air, surface swab and wastewater samples

Helena M Solo-Gabriele  1 , Shelja Kumar  2 , Samantha Abelson  2 , Johnathon Penso  2 , Julio Contreras  2 , Kristina M Babler  1 , Mark E Sharkey  3 , Alejandro M A Mantero  2 , Walter E Lamar  4 , John J Tallon Jr  5 , Erin Kobetz  6 , Natasha Schaefer Solle  6 , Bhavarth S Shukla  3 , Richard J Kenney  7 , Christopher E Mason  8 , Stephan C Schürer  9 , Dusica Vidovic  10 , Sion L Williams  11 , George S Grills  11 , Dushyantha T Jayaweera  3 , Mehdi Mirsaeidi  12 , Naresh Kumar  13
Affiliations

Predicting COVID-19 cases using SARS-CoV-2 RNA in air, surface swab and wastewater samples

Helena M Solo-Gabriele et al. Sci Total Environ. .

Abstract

Genomic footprints of pathogens shed by infected individuals can be traced in environmental samples, which can serve as a noninvasive method of infectious disease surveillance. The research evaluates the efficacy of environmental monitoring of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in air, surface swabs and wastewater to predict COVID-19 cases. Using a prospective experimental design, air, surface swabs, and wastewater samples were collected from a college dormitory housing roughly 500 students from March to May 2021 at the University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL. Students were randomly screened for COVID-19 during the study period. SARS-CoV-2 concentration in environmental samples was quantified using Volcano 2nd Generation-qPCR. Descriptive analyses were conducted to examine the associations between time-lagged SARS-CoV-2 in environmental samples and COVID-19 cases. SARS-CoV-2 was detected in air, surface swab and wastewater samples on 52 (63.4 %), 40 (50.0 %) and 57 (68.6 %) days, respectively. On 19 (24 %) of 78 days SARS-CoV-2 was detected in all three sample types. COVID-19 cases were reported on 11 days during the study period and SARS-CoV-2 was also detected two days before the case diagnosis on all 11 (100 %), 9 (81.8 %) and 8 (72.7 %) days in air, surface swab and wastewater samples, respectively. SARS-CoV-2 detection in environmental samples was an indicator of the presence of local COVID-19 cases and a 3-day lead indicator for a potential outbreak at the dormitory building scale. Proactive environmental surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 or other pathogens in multiple environmental media has potential to guide targeted measures to contain and/or mitigate infectious disease outbreaks within communities.

Keywords: Air, surface and wastewater; COVID-19; COVID-19 epidemiology; Environmental surveillance; SARS-CoV-2.

PubMed Disclaimer

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
Concentration of SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater, surface and air samples and COVID-19 cases in a UM dormitory, March–May 2021. Maroon vertical lines indicate dates when COVID-19 cases were reported; on two days, 4/19/2021 and 4/23/201 represented by a single line two COVID-19 cases were reported, lines on these days represent two cases each. Black dots indicate days when COVID-19 monitoring occurred in the dormitory and dark orange symbols indicate days when COVID-19 case(s) were detected.
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
One-day lagged moving average of SARS-CoV-2 in air and surface samples (on y-axis) with respect to SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater samples (on x-axis), March–May 2021 (wastewater concentration on x-axis). Dark orange symbol shows SARS-CoV-2 values in air and wastewater samples, respectively; red circle around orange indicates COVID-19 case detection; green symbol shows SARS-CoV-2 values on surface and in wastewater samples; brown circle around green circle indicates COVID-19 case detection on days these samples were collected.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Update of

References

    1. APHA . In: Standard Methods for the Examination of Water & Wastewater, Centennial Edition. 21st edition. Eaton A.D., et al., editors. American Public Health Association; Washington DC: 2005.
    1. Babady N.E., et al. Performance of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 real-time RT-PCR tests on oral rinses and saliva samples. J. Mol. Diagn. 2020;23:3–9. doi: 10.1016/j.jmoldx.2020.10.018. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Babler K.M., et al. Comparison of electronegative filtration to magnetic bead-based concentration and V2G-qPCR to RT-qPCR for quantifying viral SARS-CoV-2 RNA from wastewater. ACS Es&T Water. 2022;23(1):1–3. doi: 10.1021/acsestwater.2c00047. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Betancourt W.Q., et al. COVID-19 containment on a college campus via wastewater-based epidemiology, targeted clinical testing and an intervention. Sci. Total Environ. 2021;779 - PMC - PubMed
    1. Biryukov J., et al. Increasing temperature and relative humidity accelerates inactivation of SARS-CoV-2 on surfaces. mSphere. 2020;5(4) - PMC - PubMed