More wastewater sampling work, “Wastewater Analysis of SARS-CoV-2 as a Predictive Metric of Positivity Rate for a Major Metropolis“. This one is a larger-scale study in a big city that found wastewater spikes in SARS-CoV-2 to present clinical positives by 2 weeks which is a huge lead time and of major significance for getting a …
A nice article by several of our colleagues from the MoBE project days. “Distribution of SARS-CoV-2 RNA Signal in a Home with COVID-19 Positive Occupants” does just what it says in the tile, looks at the signal from SARS-CoV-2 in a home… long after the occupants were determined positive. They sampled two months after the …
This is a bit more up our alley! “The wastewater microbiome: A novel insight for COVID-19 surveillance” doesn’t look directly at the virus but at the changes in the wastewater microbiome that might proceed detection of SARS-CoV-2. The authors claim to observe such changes which could potentially be really useful. We already know that wastewater …
A break from wastewater articles! “Longitudinal monitoring of SARS-CoV-2 RNA on high-touch surfaces in a community setting“. There’s not actually been a ton of articles about fomites recently… this appears less and less likely to be a source of transmission for SARS-CoV-2 although we certainly wouldn’t want to rule it out. It is, after all, …
Getting harder to keep up with all the wastewater articles related to SARS-CoV-2. It’s becoming more and more common as a method of environmental surveillance for the virus. And yes, this article, Tracking SARS-CoV-2 RNA through the wastewater treatment process, came out a month ago… I’ve been too busy working on the pandemic to blog …
Here’s an article about a superspreader event… which of course falls under the rubric of the microbiology of the built environment, because all these large transmission events happen indoors! “Community Outbreak Investigation of SARS-CoV-2 Transmission Among Bus Riders in Eastern China” describes… well like it says in the title. Good evidence for airborne spread here, …
More wastewater surveillance coming out. Not sure about the title on this one since there’s been a number of publications on wastewater detection of SARS-CoV-2 in the US but maybe this title was correct when they submitted this paper “First detection of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in wastewater in North America: A study in Louisiana, USA“. Pretty …
Very nice and cleanly done study here, “Air and Environmental Contamination Caused by COVID-19 Patients: a Multi-Center Study” is a very straightforward look at the spread of SARS-CoV-2 in a healthcare setting… without aerosol generating procedures being part of the pictures. They looked at the air (all negative) and a bunch of surfaces (27% positive …
Here’s the kind of article that we’ve been asking for since March… looking at the infectivity of SARS-CoV-2 on various surfaces (including paper money) under various conditions. I was excited when I saw the title and some of the media buzz about this paper. But then I looked a bit deeper. So “The effect of …
Another wastewater study… but looking at the very important question of whether infectious virus can be detected in the waste stream. Most wastewater studies to date have only looked at viral RNA. The not-too-surprising punchline is that infectious virus dies out long before the RNA signal is degraded. This kind of information we be useful …