Wastewater monitoring for detection of public health markers during the COVID-19 pandemic: Near-source monitoring of schools in England over an academic year.

Background: Schools are high-risk settings for infectious disease transmission. Wastewater monitoring for infectious diseases has been used to identify and mitigate outbreaks in many near-source settings during the COVID-19 pandemic, including universities and hospitals but less is known about the technology when applied for school health protection. This study aimed to implement a wastewater surveillance system to detect SARS-CoV-2 and other public health markers from wastewater in schools in England.

Evaluation of variant calling algorithms for wastewater-based epidemiology using mixed populations of SARS-CoV-2 variants in synthetic and wastewater samples.

Wastewater-based epidemiology has been used extensively throughout the COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 19) pandemic to detect and monitor the spread and prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2) and its variants. It has proven an excellent, complementary tool to clinical sequencing, supporting the insights gained and helping to make informed public-health decisions. Consequently, many groups globally have developed bioinformatics pipelines to analyse sequencing data from wastewater.

Rapid Assessment of SARS-CoV-2 Variant-Associated Mutations in Wastewater Using Real-Time RT-PCR.

Within months of the COVID-19 pandemic being declared on March 20, 2020, novel, more infectious variants of SARS-CoV-2 began to be detected in geospatially distinct regions of the world. With international travel being a lead cause of spread of the disease, the importance of rapidly identifying variants entering a country is critical. In this study, we utilized wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) to monitor the presence of variants in wastewater generated in managed COVID-19 quarantine facilities for international air passengers entering the United Kingdom.

A comparison of precipitation and filtration-based SARS-CoV-2 recovery methods and the influence of temperature, turbidity, and surfactant load in urban wastewater.

Wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) has become a complimentary surveillance tool during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. Viral concentration methods from wastewater are still being optimised and compared, whilst viral recovery under different wastewater characteristics and storage temperatures remains poorly understood. Using urban wastewater samples, we tested three viral concentration methods; polyethylene glycol precipitation (PEG), ammonium sulphate precipitation (AS), and CP select™ InnovaPrep® (IP) ultrafiltration.

Understanding and managing uncertainty and variability for wastewater monitoring beyond the pandemic: Lessons learned from the United Kingdom national COVID-19 surveillance programmes.

The COVID-19 pandemic has put unprecedented pressure on public health resources around the world. From adversity, opportunities have arisen to measure the state and dynamics of human disease at a scale not seen before. In the United Kingdom, the evidence that wastewater could be used to monitor the SARS-CoV-2 virus prompted the development of National wastewater surveillance programmes.

Author Correction: Global diversity and biogeography of bacterial communities in wastewater treatment plants.

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

Global diversity and biogeography of bacterial communities in wastewater treatment plants.

Microorganisms in wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) are essential for water purification to protect public and environmental health. However, the diversity of microorganisms and the factors that control it are poorly understood. Using a systematic global-sampling effort, we analysed the 16S ribosomal RNA gene sequences from ~1,200 activated sludge samples taken from 269 WWTPs in 23 countries on 6 continents.