Concentration methods for the quantification of coronavirus and other potentially pandemic enveloped virus from wastewater

Abstract

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Wastewater-based epidemiology as a useful tool to track SARS-CoV-2 and support public health policies at municipal level in Brazil

“…The mean recovery rate of BRSV, used as a surrogate of SARS-CoV-2, obtained in our study was 27.4%, similar to values ranging from ≤6% to 33.5%, previously obtained for enveloped viruses using the ultracentrifugation-based method ( Ye et al., 2016 ; Ahmed et al., 2020b ; Rusiñol et al., 2020 ). For PP7, the mean recovery rate found was of 18.5%, similar to the one found for mengovirus (11 ± 2.1%), a non-enveloped picornavirus ( Randazzo et al., 2020 ).…”

Approaches applied to detect SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater and perspectives post-COVID-19

“…The approaches applied for this purpose are multiple and include the one used for poliovirus concentration based on two-phase separation method [ 36 ], precipitation [ 21 ], centrifugation [ 37 , 38 ], ultrafiltration [ 8 , 38 ], conventional filtration [ 33 ] and filtration by negatively charged membranes [ 39 ], and a combination of these approaches ( Table 1 ). Although there are efficient methods to concentrate enveloped virus such as coronaviruses from wastewater [ 40 ] and tap water [ 41 ], the specific efficiency in recovering SARS-CoV-2 may perform differently. Therefore, it is highly recommended to determine the recovery rate of the virus for the concentration method applied.…”

Comparing analytical methods to detect SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater

“…Additionally, WBE has the potential to be applied in high-risk settings such as nursing homes and hospital or in lowresource settings (WHO, 2020). As recently stated by WHO, WBE research should be seen as an important public health objective to advance knowledge about COVID-19, however, many technical issues still need to be addressed (Ahmed et al, 2020b;Polo et al, 2020;Rusiñol et al, 2020;WHO, 2020). In an attempt to coordinate current knowledge and data gaps, the European Commission (EC) created a Pan-European Umbrella Study to better understand the limitations and challenges of this approach including the development of a roadmap for a systemic rollout of complementing ongoing national and regional surveillances in a unique approach (EC, 2020).…”

“…In this sense, viral concentration and nucleic acid extraction methods are two critical steps for the analysis of viruses in wastewater and quality controls must be accurately defined. To our knowledge, three studies have compared different concentration methods using SARS-CoV-2 surrogates (Ahmed et al, 2020c;Jafferali et al, 2020;Rusiñol et al, 2020). However, the analytical performances of SARS-CoV-2 concentration, extraction, and detection procedures tested alongside are not yet characterized for wastewater samples.…”