Future perspectives of wastewater-based epidemiology: Monitoring infectious disease spread and resistance to the community level

Abstract

Infectious diseases are acknowledged as one of the most critical threats to global public health today. Climate change, unprecedented population growth with accelerated rates of antimicrobial resistance, have resulted in both the emergence of novel pathogenic organisms and the re-emergence of infections that were once controlled. The consequences have led to an increased vulnerability to infectious diseases globally. The ability to rapidly monitor the spread of diseases is key for prevention, intervention and control, however several limitations exist for current surveillance systems and the capacity to cope with the rapid population growth and environmental changes. Wastewater-Based Epidemiology (WBE) is a new epidemiology tool that has potential to act as a complementary approach for current infectious disease surveillance systems and an early warning system for disease outbreaks. WBE postulates that through the analysis of population pooled wastewater, infectious disease and resistance spread, the emergence of new disease outbreak to the community level can be monitored comprehensively and in real-time. This manuscript provides critical overview of current infectious disease surveillance status, as well as it introduces WBE and its recent advancements. It also provides recommendations for further development required for WBE application as an effective tool for infectious disease surveillance.

Analysis of the scientific production of the effect of COVID-19 on the environment: A bibliometric study

“…Environmental study academics also have explored how the monitoring of environmental settings can serve to prevent and predict such outbreaks and, consequently, improve public health. Sims and Kasprzyk-Hordern (2020) concluded that the emergence of new infectious diseases (e.g., COVID-19) can be monitored comprehensively and in real time by analyzing accumulated wastewater. This technique has served to survey markers in wastewater treatment to characterize chemicals, drug use patterns, and the spread of disease within communities.…”

“…Other studies have focused on the survivability of earlier strains of coronavirus in water and wastewater ( Gundy et al, 2008 ; Ye et al, 2016 ). Recent environmental literature is placing great weight on the antecedents and consequences of COVID-19 on the environment and its interaction with human activities (e.g., Sims and Kasprzyk-Hordern, 2020 ; Wang and Su, 2020 ; Xie and Zhu, 2020 ). The intention of the current study is to offer a first straightforward report on the evolution of publications combining the effect of COVID-19 on the environment since the outset of the pandemic, as well as to identify the main lines of research that are surging as a result of the crisis and establish a research agenda for environmental scholars.…”

The most eagerly awaited summer of the Anthropocene: A perspective of SARS-CoV-2 decay and seasonal change

“…Still we can remain optimistic about the endurance declination of COVID-19, as human immunity increases in the summer owing to favourable seasonal variation in the genetic activities, blood composition and adipose tissue (van der Hoek et al, 2004;University of Cambridge, 2015;Castro Dopico et al, 2015;Donnelly, 2015). Nevertheless, factors like carrier prevalence, treatment efficacy of wastewater burden (virus source), and level of spread, will remain critical variables Wu et al, 2020;Sims and Kasprzyk-Hordern, 2020). Overall, at this juncture, we just intend to point out that in this crisis we should not lose faith on scientific facts and principles logics which strongly suggests COVID will not endure high temperature and humidity of the (Indian/Tropical) summer.…”

Presence and vitality of SARS-CoV-2 virus in wastewaters and rivers

“…The infection started to increase since the end of February, 2020, reached a maximum in the second half of March, 2020, and then has slowly decreased. These epidemiological data need standardized collection methods (Sims and Kasprzyk-Hordern, 2020) and in Italy are probably affected by unequal sampling efforts and asynchrony of records respect to the real infection dates. Hence, temporal correlation between wastewater-based and clinical epidemiology can be hampered by these factors.…”