SARS-CoV-2 surveillance in untreated wastewater: first detection in a low-resource community in Buenos Aires, Argentina

Abstract

Abstract Recently, the World Health Organization (WHO) in a brief report about the status of environmental surveillance for SARS-CoV-2 indicated that approaches are needed that can be applied in lower-resource settings, where a greater proportion of the population is not connected to sewers and instead uses pit toilets or septic tanks. Possibilities include testing surface water contaminated by sewage . In this study we measured SARS-CoV-2 RNA from a surface water source in a low-income settlement. We observe for this community that measurements of SARS-CoV-2 concentrations in surface water contaminated by sewage can be considered as an estimation of changes in COVID-19 prevalence on a population level.