Department of Microbiology and Parasitology, CIBUS-Facultade de Bioloxía & Institute CRETUS, Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, Santiago de Compostela, 15782, Spain.
School of Engineering, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, United Kingdom.
Water Res. 2020 Nov 1;186:116404. doi: 10.1016/j.watres.2020.116404. Epub 2020 Sep 9.
The presence of SARS-CoV-2 in the feces of infected patients and wastewater has drawn attention, not only to the possibility of fecal-oral transmission but also to the use of wastewater as an epidemiological tool. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted problems in evaluating the epidemiological scope of the disease using classical surveillance approaches, due to a lack of diagnostic capacity, and their application to only a small proportion of the population. As in previous pandemics, statistics, particularly the proportion of the population infected, are believed to be widely underestimated. Furthermore, analysis of only clinical samples cannot predict outbreaks in a timely manner or easily capture asymptomatic carriers. Threfore, community-scale surveillance, including wastewater-based epidemiology, can bridge the broader community and the clinic, becoming a valuable indirect epidemiological prediction tool for SARS-CoV-2 and other pandemic viruses. This article summarizes current knowledge and discusses the critical factors for implementing wastewater-based epidemiology of COVID-19.
新冠病毒(SARS-CoV-2)存在于感染患者的粪便和废水中,不仅引起了人们对粪-口传播可能性的关注,还使人们开始利用废水作为一种流行病学工具。由于诊断能力不足,以及此类方法仅应用于一小部分人群,使得使用传统监测方法评估疾病的流行病学范围存在问题,这在新冠疫情期间尤为明显。与以往的大流行一样,统计数据,特别是感染人群的比例,被认为是广泛被低估的。此外,仅对临床样本进行分析既不能及时预测疫情爆发,也不能轻易捕捉无症状感染者。因此,包括基于废水的流行病学在内的社区规模监测,可以将更广泛的社区与临床联系起来,成为一种有价值的间接流行病学预测工具,可用于新冠病毒(SARS-CoV-2)和其他大流行病毒。本文总结了当前的相关知识,并讨论了实施基于废水的新冠病毒流行病学监测的关键因素。