Rethinking wastewater risks and monitoring in light of the COVID-19 pandemic

TLDR

The COVID‑19 pandemic has severely impacted public health and the economy, and evidence shows SARS‑CoVs persist in wastewater for days, posing health risks that conventional treatment only partially removes. This underscores the need for a risk assessment and management framework tailored to SARS‑CoV‑2 transmission via wastewater, including new tools for environmental surveillance and ensuring adequate disinfection as part of pandemic containment. The review synthesizes existing evidence on SARS‑CoV transmission through waterborne, aerosolized, and foodborne routes during a pandemic.

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has severely impacted public health and the worldwide economy. Converging evidence from the current pandemic, previous outbreaks and controlled experiments indicates that SARS-CoVs are present in wastewater for several days, leading to potential health risks via waterborne and aerosolized wastewater pathways. Conventional wastewater treatment provides only partial removal of SARS-CoVs, thus safe disposal or reuse will depend on the efficacy of final disinfection. This underscores the need for a risk assessment and management framework tailored to SARS-CoV-2 transmission via wastewater, including new tools for environmental surveillance, ensuring adequate disinfection as a component of overall COVID-19 pandemic containment. Converging evidence indicates that SARS-CoVs are present in wastewater for several days with potential health risks. This Review analyses knowledge about such risks as well as the potential spread of SARS-CoVs in waterborne, waterborne–aerosolized and waterborne–foodborne pathways during a pandemic.