Assessment of a mass balance equation for estimating community-level prevalence of COVID-19 using wastewater-based epidemiology in a mid-sized city

Wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) has emerged as a valuable epidemiologic tool to detect the presence of pathogens and track disease trends within a community. WBE overcomes some limitations of traditional clinical disease surveillance as it uses pooled samples from the entire community, irrespect...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Scientific reports 2022-11, Vol.12 (1), p.19085-11, Article 19085
Main Authors: Rainey, Andrew L., Loeb, Julia C., Robinson, Sarah E., Davis, Paul, Liang, Song, Lednicky, John A., Coker, Eric S., Sabo-Attwood, Tara, Bisesi, Joseph H., Maurelli, Anthony T.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
631/326/171
631/326/1762
COVID-19 - epidemiology
Humanities and Social Sciences
Humans
multidisciplinary
Pandemics
Prevalence
RNA, Viral
SARS-CoV-2
Science
Science (multidisciplinary)
Wastewater
Wastewater-Based Epidemiological Monitoring
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Summary:Wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) has emerged as a valuable epidemiologic tool to detect the presence of pathogens and track disease trends within a community. WBE overcomes some limitations of traditional clinical disease surveillance as it uses pooled samples from the entire community, irrespective of health-seeking behaviors and symptomatic status of infected individuals. WBE has the potential to estimate the number of infections within a community by using a mass balance equation, however, it has yet to be assessed for accuracy. We hypothesized that the mass balance equation-based approach using measured SARS-CoV-2 wastewater concentrations can generate accurate prevalence estimates of COVID-19 within a community. This study encompassed wastewater sampling over a 53-week period during the COVID-19 pandemic in Gainesville, Florida, to assess the ability of the mass balance equation to generate accurate COVID-19 prevalence estimates. The SARS-CoV-2 wastewater concentration showed a significant linear association (Parameter estimate = 39.43, P value 
ISSN:2045-2322
2045-2322
DOI:10.1038/s41598-022-21354-6