Identifying spatiotemporal trends of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in wastewater: From the perspective of upstream and downstream wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE)

Abstract

Recently, many efforts have been made to address the rapid spread of newly identified COVID-19 virus variants . Wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) is considered as a potential early warning tool for identifying the rapid spread of this virus. This study investigated the occurrence of SARS-CoV-2 in eight wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) and their sewerage systems which serve most of the population in Taoyuan City, Taiwan. Across the entire study period, the wastewater viral concentrations were correlated with the number of COVID-19 cases in each WWTP (Spearman' r = 0.23 - 0.76). In addition, it is confirmed that several treatment technologies could effectively eliminate the virus RNA from WWTPs influent (> 90 %). On the other hand, further results revealed that an inverse distance weighted (IDW) interpolation and hot spot model combined with geographic information system (GIS) method could be applied to analyze the spatiotemporal variations of SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater from sewer system. In addition, socio-economic factors namely population density, land-use, and tax-income were successfully identified as the potentials drivers which substantially affect the onset of COVID-19 outbreak in Taiwan. Finally, the data obtained from this study can provide a powerful tool in public health decision-making not only in response to the current epidemic situation but also other epidemic issues in the future.