ArticleFrontiers in public health2024
Longitudinal wastewater-based surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 during 2023 in Ethiopia.
Article in Frontiers in public health, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
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
7 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- A Systematic Review of Methodological Approaches to SARS-CoV-2 Wastewater Surveillance.Viruses · 2026Pooled it
- Environmental surveillance of pathogens in Africa.Applied and environmental microbiology · 2026Review
- Designing effective SARS-CoV-2 wastewater surveillance system: lessons learnt from sustained monitoring in Delhi, India.BMC infectious diseases · 2026Article
- Wastewater-based surveillance as a proactive public health tool: insights from SARS-CoV-2 monitoring in Kampala, Uganda (2023-2024).BMC public health · 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
- 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
- Monitoring SARS-CoV-2 variants in wastewater during periods of low clinical case surveillance in Ethiopia.mSphere · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
30 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Introduction: Although wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) successfully functioned as a tool for monitoring the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic globally, relatively little is known about its utility in low-income countries. This study aimed to quantify severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) RNA in wastewater, estimate the number of infected individuals in the catchment areas, and correlate the results with the clinically reported COVID-19 cases in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Methods: A total of 323 influent and 33 effluent wastewater samples were collected from three Wastewater Treatment Plants (WWTPs) using a 24-h composite Moore swab sampling method from February to November 2023. The virus was captured using Ceres Nanotrap® Enhancement Reagent 2 and Nanotrap® Microbiome A Particles, and then nucleic acids were extracted using the Qiagen QIAamp Viral RNA Mini Kit. The ThermoFisher TaqPath™ COVID-19 kit was applied to perform real-time reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) to quantify the SARS-CoV-2 RNA. Wastewater viral concentrations were normalized using flow rate and number of people served. In the sampling period, spearman correlation was used to compare the SARS-CoV-2 target gene concentration to the reported COVID-19 cases. The numbers of infected individuals under each treatment plant were calculated considering the target genes' concentration, the flow rate of treatment plants, a gram of feces per person-day, and RNA copies per gram of feces. Results: SARS-CoV-2 was detected in 94% of untreated wastewater samples. All effluent wastewater samples ( Discussion: This study revealed that SARS-CoV-2 was circulating in the community and confirmed previous reports of more asymptomatic COVID-19 cases in Ethiopia. Additionally, this study provides further evidence of the importance of wastewater-based surveillance in general to monitor infectious diseases in low-income settings. Conclusion: Wastewater-based surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 can be a useful method for tracking the increment of COVID-19 cases before it spreads widely throughout the community.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
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.