Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, School of Engineering and Doerr School of Sustainability, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, United States of America.
Unit of Environmental Engineering, University of Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria.
PLoS One. 2024 Nov 18;19(11):e0313927. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0313927. eCollection 2024.
Wastewater-Based Epidemiology (WBE) has become a powerful tool for assessing disease occurrence in communities. This study investigates the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) epidemic in the United States during 2023-2024 using wastewater data from 189 wastewater treatment plants in 40 states and the District of Columbia. Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and pepper-mild mottle virus normalized SARS-CoV-2 RNA concentration data were compared with COVID-19 hospitalization admission data at both national and state levels. We further investigate temporal features in wastewater viral RNA abundance, with peak timing and cross-correlation lag analyses indicating that wastewater SARS-CoV-2 RNA concentrations precede hospitalization admissions by 2 to 12 days. Lastly, we demonstrate that wastewater treatment plant size has a significant effect on the variability of measured SARS-CoV-2 RNA concentrations. This study highlights the effectiveness of WBE as a non-invasive, timely and resource-efficient disease monitoring strategy, especially in the context of declining COVID-19 clinical reporting.
污水流行病学（WBE）已成为评估社区疾病发生的有力工具。本研究利用来自 40 个州和哥伦比亚特区的 189 个污水处理厂的污水数据，调查了 2023-2024 年美国的 2019 年冠状病毒病（COVID-19）疫情。对严重急性呼吸系统综合症冠状病毒 2（SARS-CoV-2）和辣椒轻度斑驳病毒进行标准化 SARS-CoV-2 RNA 浓度数据分析，并与国家和州两级的 COVID-19 住院入院数据进行比较。我们进一步研究了污水病毒 RNA 丰度的时间特征，峰值时间和互相关滞后分析表明，污水 SARS-CoV-2 RNA 浓度先于住院入院 2 至 12 天。最后，我们证明污水处理厂规模对测量的 SARS-CoV-2 RNA 浓度的变异性有显著影响。本研究强调了 WBE 作为一种非侵入性、及时和资源高效的疾病监测策略的有效性，特别是在 COVID-19 临床报告下降的情况下。
