Long-term monitoring of COVID 19 prevalence in raw and treated wastewater in Salvador, a largest capital of Brazilian Northeast

Abstract

Wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) becomes an interesting epidemiological approach to monitoring the prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 broadly and non-invasively. Herein, we employing for the first time WBE, associated or not with the PEG 8000 precipitation method, for detection of SARS-CoV-2 in samples of raw or treated wastewater from 22 municipal wastewater treatment stations (WWTPs) located in Salvador, the fourth most populous city in Brazil. Our results demonstrate the success of the application of WBE for detecting SARS-CoV-2 in both types of evaluated samples, regardless the usage of PEG 8000 concentration procedure. Further, an increase in SARS-CoV-2 positivity rate was observed in samples collected in months that presented the highest number of confirmed COVID-19 cases (May/2021, June/2021 and January/2022). While PEG 8000 concentration step was found to significantly increase the positivity rate in treated wastewater samples (p < 0.005), a strong positive correlation (r: 0.84; p < 0.002) between non-concentrated raw wastewater samples with the number of new cases of COVID-19 (April/2021 – February/2022) was observed. In general, the present results reinforce the efficiency of WBE approach to monitor the presence of SARS-CoV-2 in either low- and high-capacity WWTPs. The successful usage of WBE even in raw wastewater samples makes it an interesting low-cost tool for epidemiological surveillance.