Application of Pan-Viral Metagenomic Sequencing on United States Air Force Academy Wastewater to Uncover Potential Causes of Acute Gastroenteritis.

Introduction: Wastewater surveillance is an important technique to monitor public health and is being studied extensively for pandemic prevention, force health protection and readiness, and as a potential early warning system for chem-bio defense. Wastewater surveillance has traditionally relied on techniques such as quantitative PCR or targeted sequencing, both of which are microbe- or disease-specific tools. Newer pan-viral metagenomics strategies may provide higher specificity for pathogens of interest, resulting in a lower false negative rate and reduced sequencing of undesired background nucleic acids.

Designing a Wastewater-Based Epidemiology Study at the U.S. Air Force Academy: Using Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 to Test a Sentinel System for Early Disease Outbreak Detection.

Introduction: The presence of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV2) in wastewater has been proposed as a sentinel surveillance epidemiological tool for detection of infectious disease at a community level and as a complementary approach to syndromic surveillance of infectious disease outbreaks. We have designed a study to test the presence and quantity of SARS-CoV2, the virus responsible for COVID19, in the wastewater treatment facility (WWTF) of the U.S.