For community-level monitoring, the European Commission under the EU Sewage Sentinel System recommends wastewater-based SARS-CoV-2 surveillance. Tracking SARS-CoV-2 variants in a community is pivotal for appropriate public health response. Genome sequencing of SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater samples for tracking variants is challenging, often resulting in low coverage genome sequences, thereby impeding the detection of the SARS-CoV-2 mutations. Therefore, we aimed at high-coverage SARS-CoV-2 genome sequences from sewage samples which we successfully accomplished. This first pan-European surveillance compared the mutation profiles associated with the variants of concerns: B.1.1.7, P.1, B.1.351 and B.1.617.2 across 20 European countries, including 54 municipalities. The results highlight that SARS-CoV-2 variants detected in the wastewater samples mirror the variants profiles reported in clinical data. This study demonstrated that >98% coverage of SARS-CoV-2 genomic sequences is possible and can be used to track SARS-CoV-2 mutations in wastewater to support identifying variants circulating in a city at the community level.
AGRAWAL Shelesh;
ORSCHLER Laura;
SCHUBERT Selina;
ZACHMANN Kira;
HEIJNEN Leo;
TAVAZZI Simona;
GAWLIK Bernd;
DE GRAAF Miranda;
MEDEMA Gertjan;
LACKNER Susanne;
2022-02-22
PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD
JRC125637
0043-1354 (online),
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0043135422001257,
https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC125637,
10.1016/j.watres.2022.118162 (online),
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