Wastewater surveillance of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 in open drains of two Indian megacities captures evolutionary lineage transitions: a zonation approach.

Wastewater-based environmental surveillance (WBES) has been proven as proxy tool for monitoring nucleic acids of pathogens shed by infected population before clinical outcomes. The poor sewershed network of low to middle-income countries (LMICs) leads to most of the wastewater flow through open drains. We studied the effectiveness of WBES using open drain samples to monitor the emergence of the SARS-CoV-2 variants in 2 megacities of India having dense population through zonation approach.