Wastewater surveillance for SARS-CoV-2 on college campuses: Initial efforts, lessons learned and research needs

Abstract

Background Wastewater surveillance for SARS-CoV-2 is an emerging approach to help identify the risk of a COVID-19 outbreak. This tool can contribute to public health surveillance at both community (wastewater treatment system) and institutional (e.g., colleges, prisons, nursing homes) scales. Objectives This research aims to understand the successes, challenges, and lessons learned from initial wastewater surveillance efforts at colleges and university systems to inform future research, development and implementation. Methods This paper presents the experiences of 25 college and university systems in the United States that monitored campus wastewater for SARS-CoV-2 during the fall 2020 academic period. We describe the broad range of approaches, findings, resource needs, and lessons learned from these initial efforts. These institutions range in size, social and political geographies, and include both public and private institutions. Discussion Our analysis suggests that wastewater monitoring at colleges requires consideration of information needs, local sewage infrastructure, resources for sampling and analysis, college and community dynamics, approaches to interpretation and communication of results, and follow-up actions. Most colleges reported that a learning process of experimentation, evaluation, and adaptation was key to progress. This process requires ongoing collaboration among diverse stakeholders including decision-makers, researchers, faculty, facilities staff, students, and community members.

Metrics to relate COVID-19 wastewater data to clinical testing dynamics

“…Wastewater surveillance has also been used in combination with clinical data to infer average population-level viral shedding dynamics (Schmitz et al, 2021;Wu et al, 2020a). Wastewater surveillance has been mostly implemented at municipal wastewater treatment plants, but as colleges and universities reopened, it has also been applied in dormitories as an early warning system to prevent large-scale outbreaks of COVID-19 (Betancourt et al, 2020;Gibas et al, 2021;Harris-Lovett et al, 2021;.…”

Wastewater-based epidemiology predicts COVID-19 community prevalence

“…Thus, WBE may be generally more accurate at identifying hot spots of COVID-19 infections within a community than reported clinical cases. Other studies have used similar approaches to demonstrate the utility of wastewater monitoring at the building scale on college and university campuses 29,30 .…”

Exploring Integrated Environmental Viral Surveillance of Indoor Environments: A comparison of surface and bioaerosol environmental sampling in hospital rooms with COVID-19 patients

“…SARS-CoV-2 environmental sampling is currently being implemented on college campuses (wastewater) and in LTCFs (surface swabs) to identify and prevent potential outbreaks in high density living situations 20,[41][42][43][44] . Wastewater surveillance is suited to detect the presence of SARS-CoV-2 in a large geographic region, possibly down to the scale of a cluster of buildings or a single building, but less likely to provide spatial resolution down to specific zones or rooms .…”