The COVID-19 outbreak due to SARS-CoV-2 has raised several concerns for its high transmission rate and unavailability of any treatment to date. Although major routes of its transmission involve respiratory droplets and direct contact, the infection through faecal matter is also possible. Conventional sewage treatment methods with disinfection are expected to eradicate SARS-CoV-2. However, for densely populated countries like India with lower sewage treatment facilities, chances of contamination are extremely high; as SARS-CoVs can survive up to several days in untreated sewage; even for a much longer period in low-temperature regions. With around 1.8 billion people worldwide using faecal-contaminated source as drinking water, the risk of transmission of COVID-19 is expected to increase by several folds, if proper precautions are not being taken. Therefore, preventing water pollution at the collection/distribution/consumption point along with proper implementation of WHO recommendations for plumbing/ventilation systems in household is crucial for resisting COVID-19 eruption.

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Wastewater treatment coupled with electricity recovery in microbial fuel cell (MFC) prefer mixed anaerobic sludge as inoculum in anodic chamber than pure stain of electroactive bacteria (EAB), due to robustness and syntrophic association. Genetic modification is difficult to adopt for mixed sludge microbes for enhancing power production of MFC. Hence, we demonstrated use of eco-friendly plant secondary metabolites (PSM) with sub-lethal concentrations to enhance the rate of extracellular electron transfer between EAB and anode and validated it in both bench-scale as well as pilot-scale MFCs. The PSMs contain tannin, saponin and essential oils, which are having electron shuttling properties and their addition to microbes can cause alteration in cell morphology, electroactive behaviour and shifting in microbial population dynamics depending upon concentrations and types of PSM used. Improvement of 2.1-times and 3.8-times in power densities was observed in two different MFCs inoculated with Eucalyptus-extract pre-treated mixed anaerobic sludge and pure culture of Pseudomonas aeruginosa, respectively, as compared to respective control MFCs operated without adding Eucalyptus-extract to inoculum. When Eucalyptus-extract-dose was spiked to anodic chamber (125 l) of pilot-scale MFC, treating septage, the current production was dramatically improved. Thus, PSM-dosing to inoculum holds exciting promise for increasing electricity production of field-scale MFCs.