Modeling the number of people infected with SARS-COV-2 from wastewater viral load in Northwest Spain
2022
Vallejo, Juan A. | Trigo-Tasende, Noelia | Rumbo-Feal, Soraya | Conde-Pérez, Kelly | López-Oriona, Ángel | Barbeito, Inés | Vaamonde, Manuel | Tarrío-Saavedra, Javier | Reif, Rubén | Ladra, Susana | Rodiño-Janeiro, Bruno K. | Nasser-Ali, Mohammed | Cid, Ángeles | Veiga, M. C. | Acevedo, Antón | Lamora, Carlos | Bou, Germán | Cao, Ricardo | Poza, Margarita
The quantification of the SARS-CoV-2 RNA load in wastewater has emerged as a useful tool to monitor COVID–19 outbreaks in the community. This approach was implemented in the metropolitan area of A Coruña (NW Spain), where wastewater from a treatment plant was analyzed to track the epidemic dynamics in a population of 369,098 inhabitants. Viral load detected in the wastewater and the epidemiological data from A Coruña health system served as main sources for statistical models developing. Regression models described here allowed us to estimate the number of infected people (R² = 0.9), including symptomatic and asymptomatic individuals. These models have helped to understand the real magnitude of the epidemic in a population at any given time and have been used as an effective early warning tool for predicting outbreaks in A Coruña municipality. The methodology of the present work could be used to develop a similar wastewater-based epidemiological model to track the evolution of the COVID–19 epidemic anywhere in the world where centralized water-based sanitation systems exist.
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