Analysis insights to support the use of wastewater and environmental surveillance data for infectious diseases and pandemic preparedness

Abstract

Wastewater-based epidemiology is the detection of pathogens from sewage systems and the interpretation of these data to improve public health. Its use has increased in scope since 2020, when it was demonstrated that SARS-CoV-2 RNA could be successfully extracted from the wastewater of affected populations. In this Perspective we provide an overview of recent advances in pathogen detection within wastewater, propose a framework for identifying the utility of wastewater sampling for pathogen detection and suggest areas where analytics require development. Ensuring that both data collection and analysis are tailored towards key questions at different stages of an epidemic will improve the inference made. For analyses to be useful we require methods to determine the absence of infection, early detection of infection, reliably estimate epidemic trajectories and prevalence, and detect novel variants without reliance on consensus sequences. This research area has included many innovations that have improved the interpretation of collected data and we are optimistic that innovation will continue in the future.