Elsevier

Water Research

Volume 202, 1 September 2021, 117388
Water Research

Assessing spatial distribution of COVID-19 prevalence in Brazil using decentralised sewage monitoring

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.watres.2021.117388Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Decentralised sewage monitoring was used to assess COVID-19 prevalence.

  • Relative prevalence index (RPI) was proposed to assess severity of pandemic in different regions.

  • Decay of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in sewage was estimated based on modelling.

  • Monitored areas had different peak length, week of peak occurrence, number of peaks.

  • The most vulnerable regions in the city were the hardest hit by the pandemic.

Abstract

Brazil has become one of the epicentres of the COVID-19 pandemic, with cases heavily concentrated in large cities. Testing data is extremely limited and unreliable, which restricts health authorities’ ability to deal with the pandemic. Given the stark demographic, social and economic heterogeneities within Brazilian cities, it is important to identify hotspots so that the limited resources available can have the greatest impact. This study shows that decentralised monitoring of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in sewage can be used to assess the distribution of COVID-19 prevalence in the city. The methodology developed in this study allowed the identification of hotspots by comprehensively monitoring sewers distributed through Belo Horizonte, Brazil's third largest city. Our results show that the most vulnerable neighbourhoods in the city were the hardest hit by the pandemic, indicating that, for many Brazilians, the situation is much worse than reported by official figures.

Keywords

Wastewater-based epidemiology
Covid-19
prevalence
Hotspots
Decentralised sewage monitoring
Health vulnerability

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