Predictive power of SARS-CoV-2 wastewater surveillance for diverse populations across a large geographical range
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Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the disparities in healthcare delivery in the US. Many communities had, and continue to have, limited access to COVID-19 testing, making it difficult to track the spread and impact of COVID-19 in early days of the outbreak. To address this issue we monitored severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) RNA at the population-level using municipal wastewater influent from 19 cities across the state of Minnesota during the COVID-19 outbreak in Summer 2020. Viral RNA was detected in wastewater continually for 20-weeks for cities ranging in populations from 500 to >1, 000, 000. Using a novel indexing method, we were able to compare the relative levels of SARS-CoV-2 RNA for each city during this sampling period. Our data showed that viral RNA trends appeared to precede clinically confirmed cases across the state by several days. Lag analysis of statewide trends confirmed that wastewater SARS-CoV-2 RNA levels preceded new clinical cases by 15-17 days. At the regional level, new clinical cases lagged behind wastewater viral RNA anywhere from 4-20 days. Our data illustrates the advantages of monitoring at the population-level to detect outbreaks. Additionally, by tracking infections with this unbiased approach, resources can be directed to the most impacted communities before the need outpaces the capacity of local healthcare systems.
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SciScore for 10.1101/2021.01.23.21250376: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Institutional Review Board Statement IRB: To recruit WWTPs, we solicited participation from the 57 WWTP members of the Minnesota Environmental Science and Economic Review Board (MESERB, meserb.org). Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Sex as a biological variable not detected. Table 2: Resources
Software and Algorithms Sentences Resources Statistical analysis: All statistical analysis was performed using JMP Pro-15 (SAS Institute, Cary N.C.) or custom R scripts. SAS Institutesuggested: (Statistical Analysis System, RRID:SCR_008567)Results from OddPub: Thank you for sharing your code and data.
Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations …SciScore for 10.1101/2021.01.23.21250376: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Institutional Review Board Statement IRB: To recruit WWTPs, we solicited participation from the 57 WWTP members of the Minnesota Environmental Science and Economic Review Board (MESERB, meserb.org). Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Sex as a biological variable not detected. Table 2: Resources
Software and Algorithms Sentences Resources Statistical analysis: All statistical analysis was performed using JMP Pro-15 (SAS Institute, Cary N.C.) or custom R scripts. SAS Institutesuggested: (Statistical Analysis System, RRID:SCR_008567)Results from OddPub: Thank you for sharing your code and data.
Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.
Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.
Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.
Results from rtransparent:- Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- No protocol registration statement was detected.
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