Elsevier

Water Research

Volume 197, 1 June 2021, 117043
Water Research

Evaluating recovery, cost, and throughput of different concentration methods for SARS-CoV-2 wastewater-based epidemiology

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.watres.2021.117043Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Five methods for concentrating SARS-CoV-2 RNA from wastewater evaluated

  • Method performance characterized via recovery, cost, throughput, and variability

  • HA filtration with bead beating had highest recovery for comparatively low cost

  • Bovine coronavirus, pepper mild mottle virus assessed as possible recovery controls

Abstract

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to affect communities across the globe, the need to contain the spread of the outbreaks is of paramount importance. Wastewater monitoring of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, the causative agent responsible for COVID-19, has emerged as a promising tool for health officials to anticipate outbreaks. As interest in wastewater monitoring continues to grow and municipalities begin to implement this approach, there is a need to further identify and evaluate methods used to concentrate SARS-CoV-2 virus RNA from wastewater samples. Here we evaluate the recovery, cost, and throughput of five different concentration methods for quantifying SARS-CoV-2 virus RNA in wastewater samples. We tested the five methods on six different wastewater samples. We also evaluated the use of a bovine coronavirus vaccine as a process control and pepper mild mottle virus as a normalization factor. Of the five methods we tested head-to-head, we found that HA filtration with bead beating performed the best in terms of sensitivity and cost. This evaluation can serve as a guide for laboratories establishing a protocol to perform wastewater monitoring of SARS-CoV-2.

Graphical abstract

Estimates of the relative relationship of the five concentration methods to each other based on different performance characteristics.

Image, graphical abstract
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