Publications by authors named "Hamed Al Qarni"
Investigation of Antibiotic Resistome in Hospital Wastewater during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Is the Initial Phase of the Pandemic Contributing to Antimicrobial Resistance?
Environ Sci Technol
November 2022
Since the COVID-19 pandemic started, there has been much speculation about how COVID-19 and antimicrobial resistance may be interconnected. In this study, untreated wastewater was sampled from Hospital A designated to treat COVID-19 patients during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic alongside Hospital B that did not receive any COVID-19 patients. Metagenomics was used to determine the relative abundance and mobile potential of antibiotic resistant genes (ARGs), prior to determining the correlation of ARGs with time/incidence of COVID-19.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEstimating the minimum number of SARS-CoV-2 infected cases needed to detect viral RNA in wastewater: To what extent of the outbreak can surveillance of wastewater tell us?
Environ Res
April 2021
Article Synopsis
- There is growing interest in using wastewater to monitor SARS-CoV-2 levels for early community outbreak detection, but a clear minimum case threshold linked to virus detection in wastewater hasn't been established.
- A study conducted at a hospital with SARS-CoV-2 patients found that detecting the virus in wastewater requires around 253-409 positive cases per 10,000 people, depending on the specific gene tested.
- The research showed weak links between gene levels in wastewater and actual hospitalized cases, and noted that the virus levels dropped significantly during wastewater treatment, indicating the early breakdown of SARS-CoV-2 genetic material.
The concentrations of 12 pharmaceutical compounds (atenolol, erythromycin, cyclophosphamide, paracetamol, bezafibrate, carbamazepine, ciprofloxacin, caffeine, clarithromycin, lidocaine, sulfamethoxazole and N-acetylsulfamethoxazol (NACS)) were investigated in the influents and effluents of two hospital wastewater treatment plants (HWWTPs) in Saudi Arabia. The majority of the target analytes were detected in the influent samples apart from bezafibrate, cyclophosphamide, and erythromycin. Caffeine and paracetamol were detected in the influent at particularly high concentrations up to 75 and 12 ug/L, respectively.
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