0000000001185479
AUTHOR
Roberta Palermo
A comprehensive one-year correlation analysis between prevalence and number of sars-cov-2 rna copies detected in wastewater from 8 sicilian cities in italy
Background and objectives: Several authors have reported positive correlations between wastewater SARS-CoV-2 concentrations and the community’s burden of infection, providing information about the disease’s epidemiological trend. This pre-post study evaluated – within a year of active surveillance, from October 1st,2021, to September 30th, 2022 – the relation between daily SARSCoV-2 prevalence and the number of genome copies/L detected in West Sicily wastewater samples. This study is part of a national framework coordinated by Istituto Superiore di Sanità. Methods: Quantitative data from analysing 486 wastewater samples collected from 9 purification plants in 8 Sicilian cities (Agrigento, B…
Wastewater-Based Epidemiology as a Tool to Detect SARS-CoV-2 Circulation at the Community Level: Findings from a One-Year Wastewater Investigation Conducted in Sicily, Italy
Wastewater-based epidemiology is a well-established tool for detecting and monitoring the spread of enteric pathogens and the use of illegal drugs in communities in real time. Since only a few studies in Italy have investigated the correlation between SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater and the prevalence of COVID-19 cases from clinical testing, we conducted a one-year wastewater surveillance study in Sicily to correlate the load of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in wastewater and the reported cumulative prevalence of COVID-19 in 14 cities from October 2021 to September 2022. Furthermore, we investigated the role of SARS-CoV-2 variants and subvariants in the increase in the number of SARS CoV-2 infections. Our findin…