Wastewater epidemiology: an environmental and health challenge

Abstract

Introduction: SARS-CoV-2, the etiological agent of the COVID-19 pandemic, is a coronavirus that is transmitted through respiratory secretions and saliva droplets of people infected with the virus. Recent studies show the presence of RNA in feces, even when the viral agent has disappeared from respiratory samples. An event that is gaining a lot of attention, if we take into account that wastewater harbors a wide variety of pathogenic viruses and the scientific community tries to decipher the potential risk generated by the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 through wastewater.

Objective: Therefore, this review aims to know the approach of wastewater epidemiology or residue-based epidemiology, used successfully for the search and monitoring of clinically important viral agents and their consequent information, to generate early outbreak alerts in communities.

Methodology: For this purpose, the keywords "epidemiology of wastewater", SARS-CoV-2, "COVID-19", "Coronavirus" and the databases: Science direct, Scopus, PubMed, Clinical Key and Medline were used.

Results: It is vital to start active searches for SARS-CoV-2, and its main variants in aquatic environments. Constituting these matrices, as a hope in the non-invasive early control of the pandemic.

Conclusions: The use of wastewater-based epidemiology as a tool to study the behavior of SARS-CoV-2 and its variants in populations will help reduce the degree of dissemination of the disease.