A. Nemudryi, A. Nemudraia, T. Wiegand, Kevin Surya, M. Buyukyoruk, C. Cicha, K. Vanderwood, R. Wilkinson, B. Wiedenheft
Cell Reports Medicine, 2020
SARS-CoV-2 has recently been detected in feces, which indicates that wastewater may be used to monitor viral prevalence in the community. Here we use RT-qPCR to monitor wastewater for SARS-CoV-2 RNA over a 74-day time course. We show that changes in SARS-CoV-2 RNA concentrations follow symptom onset gathered by retrospective interview of patients but precedes clinical test results. Additionally, we determine a near complete (98.5%) SARS-CoV-2 genome sequence from the wastewater and use phylogenetic analysis to infer viral ancestry. Collectively, this work demonstrates how wastewater can be used as a proxy to monitor viral prevalence in the community and how genome sequencing can be used for genotyping viral strains circulating in a community.
Cited by 96 publications.
Field of study: Biology