Wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) is an emerging tool aimed to monitor the spread of infectious diseases. Traditionally when disease outbreaks are detected, their progression is monitored by the clinical testing of symptomatic individuals. With traditional clinical testing, there is a reliance upon infected individuals consenting to testing, therefore potential outbreaks can be missed, and disease incidence can be under-reported. With the WBE approach, the overall goal is to yield medical results that represent a communities’ population, not just those who subject to testing. Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) can be found in the waste of infected individuals, even in those who may appear to be asymptomatic. This study aimed to use wastewater-based epidemiology to monitor the spread of COVID-19 from several locations on George Mason University’s campus in Fairfax, Virginia. In this process, multiple 200 mL samples of wastewater were collected from designated locations on campus. The samples were transported to the lab on ice where they underwent a membrane filtration to prepare for the RNA extraction method. The extracted wastewater samples were analyzed via RT-qPCR. Forward and reverse COVID-19 primers were used as the standards in the qPCR analysis. Nanodrop instrument was used to quantify the concentrations of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in each aliquot of the extracted samples. SARS-CoV-2 RNA was successfully detected. With WBE as a recently emerging tool, the experimental results must be confirmed. We will validate the results with the ongoing campus RT-PCR saliva-based COVID-19 testing. Once the results are confirmed, wastewater-based epidemiology will be used as a surveillance method to track COVID-19.

Monitoring the spread of COVID-19 using wastewater-based epidemiology

ACS Fall 2021

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