Prevalence and Circulation Patterns of SARS-CoV-2 Variants in European Sewage Mirror Clinical Data of 54 European Cities

Overview

Journal Water Res

Specialties Environmental Health
Toxicology

Date 2022 Feb 22

PMID 35193077

Authors

Shelesh Agrawal

Laura Orschler

Selina Schubert

Kira Zachmann

Leo Heijnen

Simona Tavazzi

Bernd Manfred Gawlik

Miranda de Graaf

Gertjan Medema

Susanne Lackner

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

For community-level monitoring, the European Commission under the EU Sewage Sentinel System recommends wastewater-based SARS-CoV-2 surveillance. Tracking SARS-CoV-2 variants in a community is pivotal for appropriate public health response. Genome sequencing of SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater samples for tracking variants is challenging, often resulting in low coverage genome sequences, thereby impeding the detection of the SARS-CoV-2 mutations. Therefore, we aimed at high-coverage SARS-CoV-2 genome sequences from sewage samples which we successfully accomplished. This first pan-European surveillance compared the mutation profiles associated with the variants of concerns: B.1.1.7, P.1, B.1.351 and B.1.617.2 across 20 European countries, including 54 municipalities. The results highlight that SARS-CoV-2 variants detected in the wastewater samples mirror the variants profiles reported in clinical data. This study demonstrated that >98% coverage of SARS-CoV-2 genomic sequences is possible and can be used to track SARS-CoV-2 mutations in wastewater to support identifying variants circulating in a city at the community level.

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