First detection of SARS-CoV-2 genetic material in the vicinity of COVID-19 isolation centre through wastewater surveillance in Bangladesh (original) (raw)
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The presence of SARS-CoV-2 genetic materials in wastewater has become a matter of grave for many countries of the world. Wastewater based epidemiology, in this context, emerged as an important tool in developed countries where proper sewage system is available. Due to the recent shift in the spread of the infection from urban to rural areas, it is now equally important to develop a similar mechanism for rural areas as well. Considering the urgency of the issue a study was conducted in 14 districts of Bangladesh and a total of 238 sewage samples were collected in two different periods from December 2020 to January 2021. We are the first to propose a surveillance system for both urban and rural areas where a proper sewage system is absent. Based on RT-PCR analysis of the water samples, in more than 92% of cases, we found the presence of the SARS-COV-2 gene (ORF1ab, N, and Internal Control-IC). The trend of Ct value varies for different study locations. The spread of genetic material for on-site (Δm = 0.0749) sanitation system was found more prominent than that of off-site sewage system (Δm = 0.0219); which indicated the shift of genetic material from urban to rural areas. Wastewater samples were also measured for physicochemical parameters, including pH (6.30 - 12.50) and temperature (22.10 - 32.60) ºC. The highest viral titer of 1975 copy/mL in sewage sample was observed in a sample collected from the isolation ward of the SARS-COV-2 hospital. Additionally, a correlation was found between bacterial load and SARS-CoV-2 genetic materials. The results indicated the association of increased Ct values with decreasing number of patients and vice versa. The findings reported in this paper contributed to the field of wastewater-based epidemiology dealing with SARS-COV-2 surveillance for developing countries where proper sewage system is absent and highlighting some of the challenges associated with this approach in such settings. Keywords: On-site Sanitation, Off-site Sanitation, SARS-CoV-2, Genetic Materials, Developing Countries, Rural Wastewater-Based Surveillance System.
The infection with SARS-CoV-2 is reported to be accompanied by the shedding of the virus in stool samples of infected patients. Earlier reports have suggested that COVID-19 agents can be present in the fecal and sewage samples and thus it can be a good indication of the pandemic extent in a community. However, no such studies have been reported in the Indian context so far. Since, several factors like local population physiology, the climatic conditions, sewage composition, and processing of samples could possibly affect the detection of the viral genome, it becomes absolutely necessary to check for the presence of the SARS-CoV-2 in the wastewater samples from wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) serving different localities of Jaipur city, which has been under red zone (pandemic hotspots) since early April 2020. Samples from different local municipal WWTPs and hospital wastewater samples were collected and wastewater based epidemiology (WBE) studies for the presence of SARS-CoV-2 we...
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Sewage Water as Indicator for Transmission of SARS-COV-2
Era's Journal of Medical Research, 2020
Covid-19 disease, a pandemic condition, is extremely challenging for entire world and human being. The virus, officially called coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) severe acute respiratory syndromes, is widely recognized as the COVID-19 virus is recently discovered virus and the subsequent disease known as the COVID-19. In a large percentage of cases, SARS-CoV-2 was released due to faecal matter during in the currently underway outbreak of COVID-19. This eventually proves that human wastewater could be the cause of SARS-CoV-2. Through its function, the sewage filtration system is a manifestation of microbial pathogens with the potential to support transmissible of viruses such as SARS-CoV-2 in certain conditions. The involvement with sewage surveillance through monitoring the spread of SARS-CoV-2 among our populations has been underlined in the current review, which may integrate existing medical surveillance restricted to the most severe COVID-19 patients. Although there is little success h...
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SARS-CoV-2 pandemic is having a devastating effect on human lives. Individuals who are symptomatic/asymptomatic or have recovered are reported to have/will have serious health complications in the future, which is going to be huge economic burden globally. Given the wide-spread transmission of SARS-CoV-2 it is almost impossible to test each and every individual for the same and isolate them. Recent reports have shown that sewage can be used as a holistic approach to estimate the epidemiology of the virus. Here we have estimated the spread of SARS-CoV-2 in the city of Hyderabad, India which is populated with nearly 10 million people. The sewage samples were collected from all the major sewage treatment plants (STPs) and were processed for detecting the viral genome using the standard RT-PCR method. Based on the average viral particle shedding per individual, the total number of individuals exposed to SARS-CoV-2 (in a window of 35 days) is about 6.6% of the population, which clearly i...
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COVID-19 positive patients can egest live SARS-CoV-2 virus through fecal matter and urine, raising concerns about viral transmission through the fecal-oral route and/or contaminated aerosolized water. These worries are heightened in many low and middle-income nations, where raw sewage is often dumped into surface waterways and open defecation betide. In this manuscript we attempt to discern the presence of SARS-CoV-2 genetic material (ORF-1ab, N and S genes) in two urban cities of India viz., Ahmedabad, in western India with ~12 WWTPs and Guwahati, in the northeast of the country with no such plants. 100% and 20% of the surface water samples had detectable SARSCoV-2 RNA load in Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar, respectively. N-gene>S-gene>ORF-1ab-gene were readily detected in the surface water of Ahmedabad, whereas, no such significant trend was found in the case of Guwahati. The high concentration of gene (ORF-1ab 800 copies/L for Sabarmati river, Ahmedabad and S-gene 565 copies/L f...