ArticleThe Science of the total environment2021
Implementing building-level SARS-CoV-2 wastewater surveillance on a university campus.
Article in The Science of the total environment, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 137 papers, 2 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
137 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled 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
- Wastewater surveillance to infer COVID-19 transmission: A systematic review.The Science of the total environment · 2022Pooled it
- Machine learning-enabled wastewater-based surveillance for emerging pathogen detection and monitoring: current applications, challenges, and future prospects.Emerging microbes & infections · 2026Review
- SARS-CoV-2 wastewater genomic surveillance: approaches, challenges, and opportunities.Genome biology · 2026Review
- Improving surveillance of infectious diseases in child daycare settings: insights from a pilot study in the Netherlands.Frontiers in public health · 2026Article
- On campus dormitories as viral transmission sinks: Phylodynamic insights into student housing networks during the COVID-19 pandemic.PLoS pathogens · 2025Article
- Performance and suitability of wastewater based-surveillance for SARS-CoV-2 RNA in public schools.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Inclusion of Physical-Chemical Water Quality Measurements Can Improve Associations between SARS-CoV-2 RNA Levels in Wastewater and COVID-19 Cases within Smaller Sewersheds.Journal of environmental engineering (New York, N.Y.) · 2025Article
- Long-Term Genomic Surveillance of SARS-CoV‑2 in Campus Wastewater Depicts Lineage Trends and Public Health Implications during and after Omicron Waves.Environment & health (Washington, D.C.) · 2025Article
- Hospital wastewater surveillance for SARS-CoV-2 identifies intra-hospital dynamics of viral transmission and evolution.Applied and environmental microbiology · 2025Article
- Identification of circulating human papillomavirus types through high-throughput sequencing of Canadian municipal and institutional wastewater samples.Applied and environmental microbiology · 2025Article
- Air, surface, and wastewater surveillance of SARS-CoV-2; a multimodal evaluation of COVID-19 detection in a built environment.Journal of exposure science & environmental epidemiology · 2025Article
- Skilled nursing facility wastewater surveillance: a SARS-CoV-2 and antimicrobial resistance detection pilot study.Journal of water and health · 2025Article
- Wastewater sequencing from a rural community enables identification of widespread adaptive mutations in a SARS-CoV-2 alpha variant.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Wastewater Speaks: Evaluating SARS-CoV-2 Surveillance, Sampling Methods, and Seasonal Infection Trends on a University Campus.Microorganisms · 2025Article
- Academic institution extensive, building-by-building wastewater-based surveillance platform for SARS-CoV-2 monitoring, clinical data correlation, and potential national proxy.PLOS global public health · 2025Article
- Near-source wastewater surveillance of SARS-CoV-2, norovirus, influenza virus and RSV across five different sites in the UK.PLOS global public health · 2025Article
- Public health actions in response to pathogen detection in wastewater and the environment: a scoping review.Frontiers in public health · 2025Article
- Turning analysis into action: opportunities and challenges in implementing wastewater science for public health decision-making.Frontiers in public health · 2025Article
- Predicting COVID-19 Cases Across a Large University Campus Using Built Environment Surveillance.Journal of the Association of Medical Microbiology and Infectious Disease Canada = Journal officiel de l'Association pour la microbiologie medicale et l'infectiologie Canada · 2024Article
77 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
19 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic has been a source of ongoing challenges and presents an increased risk of illness in group environments, including jails, long-term care facilities, schools, and residential college campuses. Early reports that the SARS-CoV-2 virus was detectable in wastewater in advance of confirmed cases sparked widespread interest in wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) as a tool for mitigation of COVID-19 outbreaks. One hypothesis was that wastewater surveillance might provide a cost-effective alternative to other more expensive approaches such as pooled and random testing of groups. In this paper, we report the outcomes of a wastewater surveillance pilot program at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, a large urban university with a substantial population of students living in on-campus dormitories. Surveillance was conducted at the building level on a thrice-weekly schedule throughout the university's fall residential semester. In multiple cases, wastewater surveillance enabled the identification of asymptomatic COVID-19 cases that were not detected by other components of the campus monitoring program, which also included in-house contact tracing, symptomatic testing, scheduled testing of student athletes, and daily symptom reporting. In the context of all cluster events reported to the University community during the fall semester, wastewater-based testing events resulted in the identification of smaller clusters than were reported in other types of cluster events. Wastewater surveillance was able to detect single asymptomatic individuals in dorms with resident populations of 150-200. While the strategy described was developed for COVID-19, it is likely to be applicable to mitigation of future pandemics in universities and other group-living environments.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.