Assessment of a mass balance equation for estimating community-level prevalence of COVID-19 using wastewater-based epidemiology in a mid-sized city.

ABSTRACT: Wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) has emerged as a valuable epidemiologic tool to detect the presence of pathogens and track disease trends within a community. WBE overcomes some limitations of traditional clinical disease surveillance as it uses pooled samples from the entire community, irrespective of health-seeking behaviors and symptomatic status of infected individuals. WBE has the potential to estimate the number of infections within a community by using a mass balance equation, however, it has yet to be assessed for accuracy. We hypothesized that the mass balance equation-based approach using measured SARS-CoV-2 wastewater concentrations can generate accurate prevalence estimates of COVID-19 within a community. This study encompassed wastewater sampling over a 53-week period durin

SUBMITTER: Rainey AL 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9645338 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature