Hart John J, Jamison Megan N, McNair James N, Szlag David C
Oakland University, Department of Chemistry, 146 Library Dr, Rochester, MI 48309, USA E-mail:
Robert B. Annis Water Resources Institute, 740 West Shoreline Dr, Muskegon, MI 49441, USA.
J Water Health. 2023 Apr;21(4):514-524. doi: 10.2166/wh.2023.314.
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is an infectious disease that is mainly spread through aerosolized droplets containing severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and is excreted in feces by infected individuals. Sewage surveillance has been applied widely to obtain data on the prevalence of COVID-19 in whole communities. We used SARS-CoV-2 gene targets N1, N2, and E to determine the prevalence of COVID-19 at both municipal and building levels. Frequency analysis of wastewater testing indicated that single markers detected only 85% or less of samples that were detected as positive for SARS-CoV-2 with the three markers combined, indicating the necessity of pairing markers to lower the false-negative rate. The best pair of markers in both municipal and building level monitoring was N1 and N2, which correctly identified 98% of positive samples detected with the three markers combined. The degradation rates of all three targets were assessed at two different temperatures (25 and 35 °C) as a possible explanation for observed differences between markers in frequency. Results indicated that all three RNA targets degrade at nearly the same rate, indicating that differences in degradation rate are not responsible for the observed differences in marker frequency.
2019冠状病毒病（COVID-19）是一种主要通过含有严重急性呼吸综合征冠状病毒2（SARS-CoV-2）的气溶胶飞沫传播且由感染者通过粪便排出的传染病。污水监测已被广泛应用于获取整个社区COVID-19流行情况的数据。我们使用SARS-CoV-2基因靶点N1、N2和E来确定COVID-19在市和建筑层面的流行情况。废水检测的频率分析表明，单个标志物仅能检测出85%或更少的样本，而这三个标志物联合检测时这些样本被判定为SARS-CoV-2阳性，这表明有必要配对标志物以降低假阴性率。在市和建筑层面监测中，最佳的标志物组合是N1和N2，它们能正确识别出98%的由三个标志物联合检测出的阳性样本。在两个不同温度（25和35°C）下评估了所有三个靶点的降解率，以此作为解释观察到的标志物频率差异的一种可能原因。结果表明，所有三个RNA靶点的降解速率几乎相同，这表明降解速率的差异并非导致观察到的标志物频率差异的原因。
