Chen Chen, Wang Yunfan, Kaur Gursharn, Adiga Aniruddha, Espinoza Baltazar, Venkatramanan Srinivasan, Warren Andrew, Lewis Bryan, Crow Justin, Singh Rekha, Lorentz Alexandra, Toney Denise, Marathe Madhav
Department of Computer Science, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, 22904, United States.
Biocomplexity Institute and Initiative, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, 22904, United States.
Epidemics. 2024 Dec;49:100793. doi: 10.1016/j.epidem.2024.100793. Epub 2024 Sep 26.
The pandemic of COVID-19 has imposed tremendous pressure on public health systems and social economic ecosystems over the past years. To alleviate its social impact, it is important to proactively track the prevalence of COVID-19 within communities. The traditional way to estimate the disease prevalence is to estimate from reported clinical test data or surveys. However, the coverage of clinical tests is often limited and the tests can be labor-intensive, requires reliable and timely results, and consistent diagnostic and reporting criteria. Recent studies revealed that patients who are diagnosed with COVID-19 often undergo fecal shedding of SARS-CoV-2 virus into wastewater, which makes wastewater-based epidemiology for COVID-19 surveillance a promising approach to complement traditional clinical testing. In this paper, we survey the existing literature regarding wastewater-based epidemiology for COVID-19 surveillance and summarize the current advances in the area. Specifically, we have covered the key aspects of wastewater sampling, sample testing, and presented a comprehensive and organized summary of wastewater data analytical methods. Finally, we provide the open challenges on current wastewater-based COVID-19 surveillance studies, aiming to encourage new ideas to advance the development of effective wastewater-based surveillance systems for general infectious diseases.
在过去几年里，新冠疫情给公共卫生系统和社会经济生态系统带来了巨大压力。为减轻其社会影响，积极追踪社区内新冠病毒的流行情况至关重要。估计疾病流行率的传统方法是根据报告的临床检测数据或调查进行估算。然而，临床检测的覆盖范围往往有限，而且检测可能耗费大量人力，需要可靠且及时的结果，以及一致的诊断和报告标准。最近的研究表明，新冠病毒感染者常常会将病毒通过粪便排到废水中，这使得基于废水的新冠病毒流行病学监测成为一种有望补充传统临床检测的方法。在本文中，我们调查了有关基于废水的新冠病毒流行病学监测的现有文献，并总结了该领域的当前进展。具体而言，我们涵盖了废水采样、样本检测的关键方面，并对废水数据分析方法进行了全面且有条理的总结。最后，我们提出了当前基于废水的新冠病毒监测研究面临的开放性挑战，旨在鼓励新的思路，以推动有效针对一般传染病的基于废水的监测系统的发展。
