Wastewater-Based Surveillance Is an Effective Tool for Trending COVID-19 Prevalence in Communities: A Study of 10 Major Communities for 17 Months in Alberta
Xiaoli Pang, Tiejun Gao, Erik Ellehoj, Qiaozhi Li, Yuanyuan Qiu, Rasha Maal‐Bared, Christopher Sikora, Graham Tipples, Mathew Diggle, Deena Hinshaw, Nicholas J. Ashbolt, James Talbot, Steve E. Hrudey, Bonita E. Lee
Abstract
from 0.51 to 0.86) in various sizes of communities. The population in the sewershed had no observed effects on the strength of the correlation. Fluctuation of SARS-CoV-2 RNA levels in wastewater mirrored increases and decreases of COVID-19 cases in the corresponding community. Since the viral shedding to sewers from all infected individuals is included, wastewater-based surveillance provides an unbiased and no-discriminate estimation of the prevalence of COVID-19 compared with clinical testing that was subject to testing-seeking behaviors and policy changes. Wastewater-based surveillance on SARS-CoV-2 represents a temporal trend of COVID-19 disease burden and is an effective and supplementary monitoring when the number of COVID-19 cases reaches detectable thresholds of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in wastewater of treatment facilities serving various sizes of populations.