Wurtz Nathalie, Lacoste Alexandre, Jardot Priscilla, Delache Alain, Fontaine Xavier, Verlande Maxime, Annessi Alexandre, Giraud-Gatineau Audrey, Chaudet Hervé, Fournier Pierre-Edouard, Augier Patrick, La Scola Bernard
Aix Marseille Univ, IRD, AP-HM, MEPHI, Marseille, France.
Institut Hospitalo-Universitaire Méditerranée-Infection, Marseille, France.
Front Microbiol. 2021 May 17;12:664477. doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2021.664477. eCollection 2021.
In recent years, and more specifically at the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis, wastewater surveillance has been proposed as a tool to monitor the epidemiology of human viral infections. In the present work, from July to December 2020, the number of copies of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in Marseille's wastewater was correlated with the number of new positive cases diagnosed in our Institute of Infectious Disease, which tested about 20% of the city's population. Number of positive cases and number of copies of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in wastewater were significantly correlated ( = 0.013). During the great epidemic peak, from October to December 2020, the curves of virus in the sewers and the curves of positive diagnoses were perfectly superposed. During the summer period, the superposition of curves was less evident as subject to many confounding factors that were discussed. We also tried to correlate the effect of viral circulation in wastewater with containment measures, probably the most unbiased correlation on their potential inflection effect of epidemic curves. Not only is this correlation not obvious, but it also clearly appears that the drop in cases as well as the drop in the viral load in the sewers occur before the containment measures. In fact, this suggests that there are factors that initiate the end of the epidemic peak independently of the containment measure. These factors will therefore need to be explored more deeply in the future.
近年来，更具体地说是在新冠疫情危机初期，废水监测已被提议作为一种监测人类病毒感染流行病学的工具。在本研究中，于2020年7月至12月期间，马赛废水中新冠病毒RNA的拷贝数与我们传染病研究所诊断出的新增阳性病例数相关，该研究所检测了该市约20%的人口。废水样本中阳性病例数和新冠病毒RNA拷贝数显著相关（ = 0.013）。在2020年10月至12月的疫情高峰期，下水道中病毒曲线与阳性诊断曲线完美叠加。在夏季，由于存在许多已讨论过的混杂因素，曲线的叠加不太明显。我们还试图将废水中病毒传播的影响与防控措施相关联，这可能是对疫情曲线潜在拐点效应最无偏倚的关联。这种关联不仅不明显，而且很明显，病例数的下降以及下水道中病毒载量的下降在防控措施之前就已出现。事实上，这表明存在一些因素能独立于防控措施引发疫情高峰期的结束。因此，这些因素未来需要更深入地探究。
