Tracking viral diversity in urban rivers: what environmental surveillance reveals about public health

Environmental surveillance is the process of continuous monitoring and analysis of environmental factors that may affect human health and the ecosystem. Monitoring pathogenic microorganisms through environmental surveillance provides data indicating the circulation of diseases in near real time and serves as a complementary tool to epidemiological studies based on clinical tests. The objective of this study was to collect representative samples of the viral community from impacted urban rivers in the Sao Paulo Metropolitan Region, Brazil and use shotgun sequencing to provide a broad view of virome diversity, microbiological quality, and the spread of viral diseases in the community.