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Jafferali MH, Khatami K, Atasoy M, Birgersson M, Williams C, Cetecioglu Z
Science of The Total Environment 755 (Pt 1) 142939
[2020-10-14; online 2020-10-14]
Wastewater-based epidemiology offers a cost-effective alternative to testing large populations for SARS-CoV-2 virus, and may potentially be used as an early warning system for SARS-CoV-2 pandemic spread. However, viruses are highly diluted in wastewater, and a validated method for their concentration and further processing, and suitable reference viruses, are the main needs to be established for reliable SARS-CoV-2 municipal wastewater detection. For this purpose, we collected wastewater from two European cities during the Covid-19 pandemic and evaluated the sensitivity of RT-qPCR detection of viral RNA after four concentration methods (two variants of ultrafiltration-based method and two adsorption and extraction-based methods). Further, we evaluated one external (bovine corona virus) and one internal (pepper mild mottle virus) reference virus. We found a consistently higher recovery of spiked virus using the modified ultrafiltration-based method. This method also had a significantly higher efficiency (p-value <0.01) for wastewater SARS-CoV-2 detection. The ultracentrifugation method was the only method that detected SARS-CoV-2 in the wastewater of both cities. The pepper mild mottle virus was found to function as a potentially suitable internal reference standard.
Funder: KAW/SciLifeLab National COVID program
Research Area: Environmental virus profiling
PubMed 33121776
DOI 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.142939
Crossref 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.142939