Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, United States.
Great Lakes Institute for Environmental Research, University of Windsor, Windsor, ON, Canada.
Front Public Health. 2023 Jul 20;11:1140441. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2023.1140441. eCollection 2023.
Wastewater surveillance has proven to be a valuable approach to monitoring the spread of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Recognizing the benefits of wastewater surveillance as a tool to support public health in tracking SARS-CoV-2 and other respiratory pathogens, numerous wastewater virus sampling and concentration methods have been tested for appropriate applications as well as their significance for actionability by public health practices.
Here, we present a 34-week long wastewater surveillance study that covers nearly 4 million residents of the Detroit (MI, United States) metropolitan area. Three primary concentration methods were compared with respect to recovery of SARS-CoV-2 from wastewater: Virus Adsorption-Elution (VIRADEL), polyethylene glycol precipitation (PEG), and polysulfone (PES) filtration. Wastewater viral concentrations were normalized using various parameters (flow rate, population, total suspended solids) to account for variations in flow. Three analytical approaches were implemented to compare wastewater viral concentrations across the three primary concentration methods to COVID-19 clinical data for both normalized and non-normalized data: Pearson and Spearman correlations, Dynamic Time Warping (DTW), and Time Lagged Cross Correlation (TLCC) and peak synchrony.
It was found that VIRADEL, which captures free and suspended virus from supernatant wastewater, was a leading indicator of COVID-19 cases within the region, whereas PEG and PES filtration, which target particle-associated virus, each lagged behind the early alert potential of VIRADEL. PEG and PES methods may potentially capture previously shed and accumulated SARS-CoV-2 resuspended from sediments in the interceptors.
These results indicate that the VIRADEL method can be used to enhance the early-warning potential of wastewater surveillance applications although drawbacks include the need to process large volumes of wastewater to concentrate sufficiently free and suspended virus for detection. While lagging the VIRADEL method for early-alert potential, both PEG and PES filtration can be used for routine COVID-19 wastewater monitoring since they allow a large number of samples to be processed concurrently while being more cost-effective and with rapid turn-around yielding results same day as collection.
污水监测已被证明是监测导致 2019 年冠状病毒病（COVID-19）的 SARS-CoV-2 病毒传播的一种有效方法。认识到污水监测作为支持公共卫生追踪 SARS-CoV-2 和其他呼吸道病原体的工具的好处，已经测试了许多污水病毒采样和浓缩方法，以确定其在适当应用中的意义以及对公共卫生实践的可操作性。
在这里，我们展示了一项为期 34 周的污水监测研究，该研究涵盖了美国底特律（密歇根州）大都市区的近 400 万居民。三种主要的浓缩方法在从污水中回收 SARS-CoV-2 方面进行了比较：病毒吸附洗脱（VIRADEL）、聚乙二醇沉淀（PEG）和聚砜（PES）过滤。使用各种参数（流速、人口、总悬浮固体）对污水病毒浓度进行归一化，以考虑流量变化。实施了三种分析方法来比较三种主要浓缩方法之间的污水病毒浓度与 COVID-19 临床数据，包括归一化和非归一化数据的 Pearson 和 Spearman 相关性、动态时间规整（DTW）和时间滞后交叉相关（TLCC）和峰值同步。
发现 VIRADEL 可以捕获上清液中的游离和悬浮病毒，是该地区 COVID-19 病例的一个主要指标，而 PEG 和 PES 过滤则针对颗粒相关病毒，每个方法都滞后于 VIRADEL 的早期预警潜力。PEG 和 PES 方法可能潜在地捕获先前从截流器中的沉积物中重新悬浮的已释放和积累的 SARS-CoV-2。
这些结果表明，VIRADEL 方法可用于增强污水监测应用的早期预警潜力，尽管其缺点包括需要处理大量污水以浓缩足够数量的游离和悬浮病毒进行检测。虽然滞后于 VIRADEL 方法的早期预警潜力，但 PEG 和 PES 过滤都可用于常规的 COVID-19 污水监测，因为它们可以同时处理大量样本，同时具有成本效益和快速周转，结果可在采集当天获得。
