SARS-CoV-2 wastewater surveillance in Arkansas Metagenome

Although SARS-CoV-2 can cause severe illness and death, a percentage of the infected population is asymptomatic. This, along with other factors, such as insufficient diagnostic testing and underreporting due to self-testing, contributes to the silent transmission of SARS-CoV-2 and highlights the importance of implementing additional surveillance tools. The fecal shedding of the virus from infected individuals enables its detection in community wastewater, and this has become a valuable public health tool worldwide as it allows the monitoring of the disease on a populational scale. Here, we monitored the presence of SARS-CoV-2 and its dynamic genomic changes in wastewater sampled from two metropolitan areas in Arkansas during major surges of COVID-19 cases and assessed how the viral titers in these samples related to the clinical case counts between late April 2020 and January 2022. The identity and genetic diversity of the virus were investigated through amplicon-based RNA sequencing, and SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern were detected in wastewater samples throughout the duration of this study. A significant association was observed between viral titers and variants of concern in wastewater and recorded number of COVID-19 cases in the areas studied. These findings support the use of wastewater surveillance as a reliable complementary tool for monitoring SARS-CoV-2 and its genetic variants at the community level.