Wastewater-based epidemiology predicts COVID-19-induced weekly new hospital admissions in over 150 USA counties.

ABSTRACT: Although the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) emergency status is easing, the COVID-19 pandemic continues to affect healthcare systems globally. It is crucial to have a reliable and population-wide prediction tool for estimating COVID-19-induced hospital admissions. We evaluated the feasibility of using wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) to predict COVID-19-induced weekly new hospitalizations in 159 counties across 45 states in the United States of America (USA), covering a population of nearly 100 million. Using county-level weekly wastewater surveillance data (over 20 months), WBE-based models were established through the random forest algorithm. WBE-based models accurately predicted the county-level weekly new admissions, allowing a preparation window of 1-4 weeks. In real applications,

SUBMITTER: Li X 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10382499 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature