SynthesisThe Science of the total environment2022
Wastewater surveillance to infer COVID-19 transmission: A systematic review.
Synthesis in The Science of the total environment, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 104 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
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.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
104 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 212 citations in OpenAlex.
- Wastewater Surveillance for Early Warning of Infectious Disease Outbreaks: A Systematic Review of Evidence and Implications for One Health Surveillance.Pathogens (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Pooled it
- A Systematic Review of Gastrointestinal and Respiratory Pathogen Detection in Wastewater in Africa, with Focus on Rwanda: Implications for Early Warning and Public Health Surveillance.Pathogens (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Pooled 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
- Real-time estimation of pathogen transmission dynamics from wastewater.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Co-prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 and Noroviruses in Wastewater Collection and Treatment Facilities of the Eastern Cape Region, South Africa: An Exacerbated Public and Environmental Health Risk Concern.Food and environmental virology · 2026Article
- Article
- Evaluation and estimation of epidemic trajectories for SARS-CoV-2 from clinical and wastewater data in Gauteng Province, South Africa.PLOS global public health · 2026Article
- Localized wastewater surveillance showed correlation but no early warning during Bengaluru's Omicron wave.PLOS global public health · 2026Article
- Budget impact of wastewater surveillance for COVID-19 in a large urban jail: an activity-based cost analysis.Frontiers in public health · 2026Article
- Long-term wastewater surveillance of SARS-CoV-2: a 5.5-year study reveals correlation with public health indicators and early warning potential during and after the pandemic.Frontiers in microbiology · 2026Article
- Sequencing and variant calling of SARS-CoV-2 from floor swabs: a potential tool for identifying emergent lineages.Microbial genomics · 2025Article
- Towards ultra-sensitive and rapid near-source wastewater-based epidemiology.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Wastewater as an early indicator for short-term forecasting COVID-19 hospitalization in Germany.BMC public health · 2025Article
- Review
- Swift Realisation of Wastewater-Based SARS-CoV-2 Surveillance for Aircraft and Airports: Challenges from Sampling to Variant Detection.Microorganisms · 2025Article
- COVID-19 and its association with meteorological, climate, and environmental factors: A systematic review.Journal of public health research · 2025Review
- Back-projection improves inference from sparsely sampled genomic surveillance data.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Thermally Responsive Alkane Partitions and a Magnetofluidic Assay for Point-of-Sample Detection of Viruses in Wastewater.Biosensors · 2025Article
- Review
- Epidemiological monitoring of sewage sludge and wastewater from an upflow anaerobic sludge blanket reactor using SARS-CoV-2 as a model.Water science and technology : a journal of the International Association on Water Pollution Research · 2025Article
44 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
6 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Successful detection of SARS-COV-2 in wastewater suggests the potential utility of wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) for COVID-19 community surveillance. This systematic review aims to assess the performance of wastewater surveillance as early warning system of COVID-19 community transmission. A systematic search was conducted in PubMed, Medline, Embase and the WBE Consortium Registry according to PRISMA guidelines for relevant articles published until 31st July 2021. Relevant data were extracted and summarized. Quality of each paper was assessed using an assessment tool adapted from Bilotta et al.'s tool for environmental science. Of 763 studies identified, 92 studies distributed across 34 countries were shortlisted for qualitative synthesis. A total of 26,197 samples were collected between January 2020 and May 2021 from various locations serving population ranging from 321 to 11,400,000 inhabitants. Overall sample positivity was moderate at 29.2% in all examined settings with the spike (S) gene having maximum rate of positive detections and nucleocapsid (N) gene being the most targeted. Wastewater signals preceded confirmed cases by up to 63 days, with 13 studies reporting sample positivity before the first cases were detected in the community. At least 50 studies reported an association of viral load with community cases. While wastewater surveillance cannot replace large-scale diagnostic testing, it can complement clinical surveillance by providing early signs of potential transmission for more active public health responses. However, more studies using standardized and validated methods are required along with risk analysis and modelling to understand the dynamics of viral outbreaks.
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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.