Abstract:
Monitoring for COVID-19 through wastewater has been used for adjunctive public health surveillance, with SARS-CoV-2 viral concentrations in wastewater correlating with incident cases in the same sewershed. However, the generalizability of these findings across sewersheds, laboratory methods, and time periods with changing variants and underlying population immunity has not been well described. The California Department of Public Health partnered with six wastewater treatment plants starting in January 2021 to monitor wastewater for SARS-CoV-2, with analyses performed at four laboratories. Using reported PCR-confirmed COVID-19 cases within each sewershed, the relationship between case incidence rates and wastewater concentrations collected over 14 months was evaluated using Spearman\'s correlation and linear regression. Strong correlations were observed when wastewater concentrations and incidence rates were averaged (10- and 7-day moving window for wastewater and cases, respectively, ρ = 0.73-0.98 for N1 gene target). Correlations remained strong across three time periods with distinct circulating variants and vaccination rates (winter 2020-2021/Alpha, summer 2021/Delta, and winter 2021-2022/Omicron). Linear regression revealed that slopes of associations varied by the dominant variant of concern, sewershed, and laboratory (β = 0.45-1.94). These findings support wastewater surveillance as an adjunctive public health tool to monitor SARS-CoV-2 community trends.
摘要:
通过废水监测COVID-19已用于辅助公共卫生监测,废水中SARS-CoV-2病毒的浓度与同一污水处理厂的事故病例有关。然而,这些发现在下水道中的普遍性,实验室方法,以及具有变化的变体和潜在人群免疫力的时间段尚未得到很好的描述。加州公共卫生部从2021年1月开始与六家污水处理厂合作,监测SARS-CoV-2的废水,并在四个实验室进行分析。使用每个污水室内报告的PCR确认的COVID-19病例,使用Spearman相关性和线性回归评估了病例发生率与14个月内收集的废水浓度之间的关系。当平均废水浓度和发生率时,观察到强烈的相关性(废水和病例的10天和7天移动窗口,分别,N1基因靶的ρ=0.73-0.98)。相关性在三个时间段内保持强劲,具有不同的循环变异和疫苗接种率(2020-2021年冬季/Alpha,2021年夏季/三角洲,和冬季2021-2022/Omicron)。线性回归显示,关联的斜率因关注的主要变体而变化,下水道,和实验室(β=0.45-1.94)。这些发现支持废水监测作为一种辅助公共卫生工具来监测SARS-CoV-2社区趋势。