Abstract
Recently, many efforts have been made to address the rapid spread of newly identified COVID-19 virus variants. Wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) is considered a potential early warning tool for identifying the rapid spread of this virus. This study investigated the occurrence of SARS-CoV-2 in eight wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) and their sewerage systems which serve most of the population in Taoyuan City, Taiwan. Across the entire study period, the wastewater viral concentrations were correlated with the number of COVID-19 cases in each WWTP (Spearman’s r = 0.23–0.76). In addition, it is confirmed that several treatment technologies could effectively eliminate the virus RNA from WWTP influent (> 90%). On the other hand, further results revealed that an inverse distance weighted (IDW) interpolation and hotspot model combined with the geographic information system (GIS) method could be applied to analyze the spatiotemporal variations of SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater from the sewer system. In addition, socio-economic factors, namely, population density, land use, and income tax were successfully identified as the potential drivers which substantially affected the onset of the COVID-19 outbreak in Taiwan. Finally, the data obtained from this study can provide a powerful tool in public health decision-making not only in response to the current epidemic situation but also to other epidemic issues in the future.
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This study was financially supported by the Department of Water Resources, Taiwan, R.O.C (Grant Number: 1101124-P1).
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All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection, and analysis were performed by DP-HT and B-CY. The first draft of the manuscript was written by DP-HT. All authors have reviewed and commented on previous versions of the manuscript. Y-FW and S-JY were in charge of supervision, validations, and project funding acquisitions. All authors have read and approved the final manuscript.
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Tran, D.PH., You, BC., Liu, CW. et al. Identifying spatiotemporal trends of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in wastewater: from the perspective of upstream and downstream wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE). Environ Sci Pollut Res 31, 11576–11590 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-023-31769-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-023-31769-x