The current Coronavirus pandemic has unleashed a health and economic crisis, unprecedented in modern times, affecting our entire infrastructure and N-WESP (National COVID-19 Wastewater Epidemiology Surveillance Programme) directly underpins national efforts to monitor and contain the spread of the virus. have shown that SARS-CoV-2 RNA can be recovered from wastewater, including from wastewater treatment plants (WWTP) preceding local COVID-19 hospitalisation activity.
Understanding how SARS-CoV-2 RNA entering the sewage system relates to the presence of COVID-19 in the community inform on hotspots and early detection of future outbreaks. Working with our , the project鈥檚 primary aim is to support the Joint Biosecurity 皇冠体育国际娱乐鈥檚 National Surveillance programme of wastewater epidemiology with well characterised methods, understanding of uncertainties and capacity for catchment and sub-catchment surveillance. N-WESP will achieve this aim through the following objectives:
- To develop and optimise protocols for the quantitative recovery of SARS-CoV-2 RNA from wastewater.
- To develop models to quantitatively relate SARS-CoV-2 RNA from wastewater to active cases of COVID-19 in the wastewater catchment population.
- To determine whether SARS-CoV-2 RNA in wastewater and sludge is infectious, and to what extent there might be downstream risks to human health.
- To exploit catchment and, uniquely, sub-catchment-scale longitudinal surveillance to understand temporal and spatial heterogeneity, relationships to human disease burden distribution and whether there are potential outbreak 鈥榟otspots鈥�.
This 16 month NERC (National Environment Research Council) funded programme is led by Dr Andrew Singer of UKCEH (UK 皇冠体育国际娱乐 for Ecology & Hydrology) and brings together experts from a wide range of disciplines, universities and research organisations.