ReviewChemical engineering journal (Lausanne, Switzerland : 1996)2021
Uncertainties in estimating SARS-CoV-2 prevalence by wastewater-based epidemiology.
Review in Chemical engineering journal (Lausanne, Switzerland : 1996), 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 88 papers, 5 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
88 citing papers in PubMed, 5 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Recent progress on wastewater-based epidemiology for COVID-19 surveillance: A systematic review of analytical procedures and epidemiological modeling.The Science of the total environment · 2023Pooled it
- Correlation between SARS-CoV-2 RNA concentration in wastewater and COVID-19 cases in community: A systematic review and meta-analysis.Journal of hazardous materials · 2023Pooled it
- SARS-CoV-2 shedding sources in wastewater and implications for wastewater-based epidemiology.Journal of hazardous materials · 2022Pooled it
- SARS-CoV-2 and other pathogens in municipal wastewater, landfill leachate, and solid waste: A review about virus surveillance, infectivity, and inactivation.Environmental research · 2022Pooled it
- Data-driven estimation of COVID-19 community prevalence through wastewater-based epidemiology.The Science of the total environment · 2021Pooled it
- Coupled epidemiological and wastewater modeling at the urban scale: A case study for Munich.iScience · 2026Article
- Toward a quality-managed operational architecture for wastewater surveillance of zoonotic and emerging pathogens.Applied and environmental microbiology · 2026Review
- Site-specific wastewater-based surveillance in early detection of COVID-19 new cases and prediction of mass testing outcomes in long-term care facilities.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Environmental and microbial factors shaping SARS-CoV-2 RNA decay in wastewater: insights from batch tests and a lab-scale sewer pipeline simulator.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Wastewater-based epidemiology reveals spatiotemporal dynamics and diurnal temperature range effects on post-pandemic SARS-CoV-2 infection burden in Chongqing, China.Frontiers in public health · 2026Article
- Varaps: a python package for estimating SARS-CoV-2 lineages proportions from pooled sequencing data (ANRS0160).BMC bioinformatics · 2025Article
- Optimizing solid-based methods for SARS-CoV-2 detection in wastewater: addressing PCR inhibition and variant challenges.Applied and environmental microbiology · 2025Article
- How local health departments use wastewater surveillance data for public health planning and intervention in New York State.BMC public health · 2025Article
- Spatiotemporal Variability of the Pepper Mild Mottle Virus Biomarker in Wastewater.ACS ES&T water · 2025Article
- Environmental Dissemination of SARS-CoV-2: An Analysis Employing Crassphage and Next-Generation Sequencing Protocols.Food and environmental virology · 2025Article
- Wastewater-based surveillance for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 variants in Gwangju, Republic of Korea.Frontiers in microbiology · 2025Article
- Evaluating energy balance and environmental footprint of sludge management in BRICS countries.Water research X · 2024Article
- Detection of SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater as an earlier predictor of COVID-19 epidemic peaks in Venezuela.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Development of a wastewater based infectious disease surveillance research system in South Korea.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Article
28 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) is a promising approach for estimating population-wide COVID-19 prevalence through detection of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) RNA in wastewater. However, various methodological challenges associated with WBE would affect the accuracy of prevalence estimation. To date, the overall uncertainty of WBE and the impact of each step on the prevalence estimation are largely unknown. This study divided the WBE approach into five steps (i.e., virus shedding; in-sewer transportation; sampling and storage; analysis of SARS-CoV-2 RNA concentration in wastewater; back-estimation) and further summarized and quantified the uncertainties associated with each step through a systematic review. Although the shedding of SARS-CoV-2 RNA varied greatly between COVID-19 positive patients, with more than 10 infected persons in the catchment area, the uncertainty caused by the excretion rate became limited for the prevalence estimation. Using a high-frequency flow-proportional sampling and estimating the prevalence through actual water usage data significantly reduced the overall uncertainties to around 20-40% (relative standard deviation, RSD). And under such a scenario, the analytical uncertainty of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in wastewater was the dominant factor. This highlights the importance of using surrogate viruses as internal or external standards during the wastewater analysis, and the need for further improvement on analytical approaches to minimize the analytical uncertainty. This study supports the application of WBE as a complementary surveillance strategy for monitoring COVID-19 prevalence and provides methodological improvements and suggestions to enhance the reliability for future studies.
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