Themed collection Wastewater Surveillance of Disease: Beyond the Ordinary

Editor-in-Chief Graham Gagnon introduces this Environmental Science: Water Research & Technology themed issue on wastewater surveillance.

Integrating point-of-care diagnostics into SARS-CoV-2 wastewater surveillance enables rapid detection and response. This innovation enhances pandemic management and has potential for broader public health applications beyond COVID-19.

Wastewater-based SARS-CoV-2 Omicron BA.1/BA.1.1 variant proportions align well with clinical surveillance-based proportions. In some California communities, wastewater-based estimates provided an early indicator of the spread of Omicron BA.1/BA.1.1.

Wastewater samples spanning three years were analyzed for human enteric pathogens and fecal indicators, highlighting seasonal, geographic, and pandemic-related variations of interest for water reuse, microbial risk assessment, and source tracking.

The combination of wastewater monitoring and targeted clinical testing enabled detection and containment of SARS-CoV-2 outbreaks in university dormitories. This integrated approach contributed to smart resource allocation and lower positivity rates.

Building-level wastewater surveillance can be an effective early warning tool during outbreaks with high specificity (>95%) though comparatively low sensitivity. Sensitivity was higher in Spring before a vaccine was administered in the population.

The GeneXpert system is cost-effective for low numbers of samples and can be used for wastewater monitoring of respiratory viruses in schools. The results were reproducible and comparably sensitive to filtration-ddPCR for SARS-CoV-2 and influenza A.

Sub-city, or sub-sewershed, wastewater monitoring for infectious diseases offers a data-driven strategy to inform local public health response and complements city-wide data from centralized wastewater treatment plants.

Respiratory adenovirus wastewater surveillance was compared to clinical data from a 2022 outbreak, showing a correlation with cases. Respiratory adenoviruses were less prevalent, with types 40/41 dominating. The schematic illustrates findings.

This study compares culture-based and ddPCR methods for quantifying carbapenem resistance in wastewater, revealing weak correlations. Nanopore sequencing clarifies resistance mechanisms, emphasizing method selection and integrated AR surveillance.

Wastewater surveillance improves university COVID-19 policy assessment, monitoring campus-to-city transmission trends for informed public health strategies.

This study evaluates the efficacy of wastewater surveillance and passive sampling techniques for the early detection of the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant in a university setting in Halifax, Canada.

Developing a simple and cost-effective wastewater concentration method using powdered activated charcoal sodium alginate (PAC-NaA) hydrogel beads, enhanced for capturing viruses.

A nationally-representative survey indicated that the population's valuation would economically justify the nationwide wastewater surveillance system in Japan.

Limited information is available on the fate of respiratory and arthropod-borne viruses in wastewater.

This study implements wastewater surveillance on a university campus to monitor highly infectious communal diseases utilizing ddPCR and overcoming the limitation of two fluorescent channels of a ddPCR reader by employing an amplitude multiplex.