Sources and routes of SARS-CoV-2 transmission in water systems in Africa: Are there any sustainable remedies?

Abstract

Governments across the globe are currently besieged with the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic caused by SARS-CoV-2. Although some countries have been largely affected by this pandemic, others are only slightly affected. In this regard, every government is taking precautionary measures to mitigate the adverse effects of COVID-19. SARS-CoV-2 has been detected in wastewater raising an alarm for Africa due to the poor water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) facilities. Also, most countries in Africa do not have resilient policies governing sanitation and water management systems, which expose them to higher risk levels for the transmission of SARS-CoV-2. Therefore, this study unearthed the likely sources and routes of SARS-CoV-2 transmission in water systems (mainly wastewater) in Africa through a holistic review of published works. This provided the opportunity to propose sustainable remedial measures, which can be extrapolated to most developing countries in the world. The principal sources and routes of potential transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in water systems are hospital sewage, waste from isolation and quarantine centres, faecal-oral transmission, contaminated surface and groundwater sources, and contaminated sewage. The envisioned overwhelming impact of these sources on the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 through water systems in Africa suggests that governments need to put stringent and sustainable measures to curtail the scourge. Hence, it is proposed that governments in Africa must put measures like improved WASH facilities and public awareness campaigns, suburbanization of wastewater treatment facilities, utilizing low-cost point-of-use water treatment systems, legally backed policy interventions, and Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS). SARS-CoV-2 in water systems can be inactivated and destroyed by integrating ozonation, chlorination, UV irradiation, and sodium hypochlorite in low-cost point-of-use treatment systems. These proposed sustainable remedial measures can help policymakers in Africa to effectively monitor and manage the untoward impact of SARS-CoV-2 on water systems and consequently, on the health of the general public.

Multiple relationships between aerosol and COVID-19: A framework for global studies

“…Thus, the variants of SARS-CoV-2 further challenged the campaign against the COVID-19 pandemic. Studies have shown that close contact and respiratory droplets can't explain all infections ( Tabatabaeizadeh, 2021 ), and the environmental transmissions have become an important mechanism of COVID-19 spread, such as water ( Sunkari et al, 2021 ), aerosol ( Santarpia et al, 2020 ), and low-temperature enhanced spread ‘cold chain’ ( Zhang, 2020 ). Among these, aerosol transmission is relatively difficult to prevent.…”

Wastewater-Based Epidemiology (WBE) and Viral Detection in Polluted Surface Water: A Valuable Tool for COVID-19 Surveillance—A Brief Review

“…In lower-resource settings, as sub-Saharan Africa, Indonesia and India, a significant part of the population is not connected to sewers and uses pit toilets, septic tanks or still practices open defecation [ 29 , 76 , 77 , 78 , 79 ]. Waterways are also used as open sewers and the discharge of untreated wastewater into the environment is an usual practice [ 77 , 78 ]. In these contexts, testing of surface water contaminated by sewage could be used as an alternative for viral monitoring [ 29 , 35 , 80 ].…”

COVID-19 and Nanoscience in the Developing World: Rapid Detection and Remediation in Wastewater

“…As reported, there has been accumulating evidence of a fecally-mediated route of transmission of SARS-CoV-2 [3]. This rapidly evolving pandemic urgently demands that the scientific community analyzes and evaluates the potential unknown sources of virus transmission that may contribute to Covid-19's resurgence, as well as effective approaches to mitigate its spread through the already known pathways [4].…”