ArticleViruses2023
Using Wastewater Surveillance to Compare COVID-19 Outbreaks during the Easter Holidays over a 2-Year Period in Cape Town, South Africa.
Article in Viruses, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
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Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed.
- Environmental surveillance of pathogens in Africa.Applied and environmental microbiology · 2026Review
- Wastewater and environmental surveillance as an early warning system and public health tool for mpox outbreak detection and management: a scoping review.BMC medicine · 2025Article
- Incidence and temporal distribution of SARS-CoV-2 circulating in the municipal wastewaters of the Buffalo City region, Eastern Cape, South Africa.Global epidemiology · 2025Article
- Advances in Wastewater-Based Epidemiology for Pandemic Surveillance: Methodological Frameworks and Future Perspectives.Microorganisms · 2025Review
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Authors and funding
17 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Wastewater surveillance of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has shown to be an important approach to determine early outbreaks of infections. Wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) is regarded as a complementary tool for monitoring SARS-CoV-2 trends in communities. In this study, the changes in the SARS-CoV-2 RNA levels in wastewater during Easter holidays in 2021 and 2022 in the City of Cape Town were monitored over nine weeks. Our findings showed a statistically significant difference in the SARS-CoV-2 RNA viral load between the study weeks over the Easter period in 2021 and 2022, except for study week 1 and 4. During the Easter week, 52% of the wastewater treatment plants moved from the lower (low viral RNA) category in 2021 to the higher (medium to very high viral RNA) categories in 2022. As a result, the median SARS-CoV-2 viral loads where higher during the Easter week in 2022 than Easter week in 2021 (p = 0.0052). Mixed-effects model showed an association between the SARS-CoV-2 RNA viral loads and Easter week over the Easter period in 2021 only (p < 0.01). The study highlights the potential of WBE to track outbreaks during the holiday period.
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