A quick, cost-effective method to track the spread of COVID-19 through untreated wastewater

Date:
August 12, 2020
Source:
Hokkaido University
Summary:
Researchers have demonstrated that, from seven methods
commonly used to test for viruses in untreated wastewater,
an adsorption-extraction technique can most efficiently detect
SARS-CoV-2.



FULL STORY ==========================================================================
A group of researchers have demonstrated that, from seven methods commonly
used to test for viruses in untreated wastewater, an adsorption-extraction technique can most efficiently detect SARS-CoV-2. This gives us another
tool to detect the presence and spread of the COVID-19 pandemic.


========================================================================== Tracking the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic is currently conducted by
testing nasal swabs or saliva samples. Tools and techniques to track the
spread of the pandemic by other means would be very beneficial; wastewater monitoring is a method that would allow us to monitor the spread of
the pandemic at a much larger scale. This is not a new technique, and
has been used for detecting non- enveloped viruses, but a conventional
method for enveloped viruses such as SARS-CoV-2 had not been developed.

In the current work, co-authored by Assistant Professor Masaaki Kitajima
from the Water Quality Control Engineering Laboratory at Hokkaido
University, scientists report a fast, economical method to concentrate coronavirus in untreated wastewater. Murine hepatitis virus (MHV), a
type of enveloped virus, is closely related to SARS-CoV-2 but does not
affect humans, and is thus safe to use for testing the feasibility of
the method. The study was published in Science of the Total Environment.

The scientists obtained MHV from mice feces and introduced it into samples
of untreated wastewater collected from Brisbane, Australia. They attempted
to recover and concentrate the MHV from these samples by seven different methods which are commonly used to test for non-enveloped viruses. The
amount of recovered MHV was determined by a method called reverse transcription- quantitative PCR, where the RNA of the virus extracted, converted to DNA, the DNA is repeatedly duplicated, and the increase in
amount of DNA is measured throughout the process.

The recovery was highest in the method that involved treating the
sample with magnesium chloride and then filtering out the virus on a negatively-charged membrane; the second highest recovery was by a similar method without magnesium chloride. The advantages of these methods include
an initial processing time of under 1 hour and the need only for cheap,
widely available equipment and reagents. There are also drawbacks, such as
the clogging of the filters that may increase processing time. However,
to date, the need for reverse transcription-qPCR for the detection of
the virus is unavoidable.

The next step would be to test this method in samples collected from
areas where the pandemic is prevalent. There are two objectives: one is
to show that the technique can be used for SARS-CoV-2, and the other is
to show that the test can be used on samples from outside the lab.

"I hope this research contributes to the establishment of a standard
protocol for the detection of SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater," says Assistant Professor Kitajima, "and this, in turn, accelerates investigations to
enhance our understanding of COVID-19 epidemiology through wastewater surveillance." He is currently involved in a number of studies related
to applying wastewater-based epidemiology to tracking the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, and has collaborated with a number of scientists and research groups across the world in this endeavor.


========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by Hokkaido_University. Note: Content
may be edited for style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Warish Ahmed, Paul M. Bertsch, Aaron Bivins, Kyle Bibby, Kata
Farkas, Amy
Gathercole, Eiji Haramoto, Pradip Gyawali, Asja Korajkic, Brian R.

McMinn, Jochen F. Mueller, Stuart L. Simpson, Wendy J.M. Smith,
Erin M.

Symonds, Kevin V. Thomas, Rory Verhagen, Masaaki
Kitajima. Comparison of virus concentration methods for the
RT-qPCR-based recovery of murine hepatitis virus, a surrogate for
SARS-CoV-2 from untreated wastewater.

Science of The Total Environment, 2020; 739: 139960 DOI: 10.1016/
j.scitotenv.2020.139960 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/08/200812115326.htm

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