Standards to support an enduring capability in wastewater surveillance for public health: Where are we?

Autor: Servetas SL; National Institute of Standards and Technology, Biosystems and Biomaterials Division, 100 Bureau Dr, Gaithersburg, MD, USA., Parratt KH; National Institute of Standards and Technology, Biosystems and Biomaterials Division, 100 Bureau Dr, Gaithersburg, MD, USA., Brinkman NE; United States Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Research and Development, 26 W Martin Luther King Dr, Cincinnati, OH, USA., Shanks OC; United States Environmental Protection Agency, Office of Research and Development, 26 W Martin Luther King Dr, Cincinnati, OH, USA., Smith T; Christina Lee Brown Envirome Institute, 302 E Muhammad Ali Blvd, Suite 103, Louisville, KY, 40202, USA., Mattson PJ; United States Department of Homeland Security, Science and Technology Directorate, 245 Murray Ln, SW, Washington, D.C., USA., Lin NJ; National Institute of Standards and Technology, Biosystems and Biomaterials Division, 100 Bureau Dr, Gaithersburg, MD, USA.
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: Case studies in chemical and environmental engineering [Case Stud Chem Environ Eng] 2022 Dec; Vol. 6, pp. 100247. Date of Electronic Publication: 2022 Aug 15.
DOI: 10.1016/j.cscee.2022.100247
Abstrakt: The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted a wide range of public health system challenges for infectious disease surveillance. The discovery that the SARS-CoV-2 virus was shed in feces and can be characterized using PCR-based testing of sewage samples offers new possibilities and challenges for wastewater surveillance (WWS). However, WWS standardization of practices is needed to provide actionable data for a public health response. A workshop was convened consisting of academic, federal government, and industry stakeholders. The objective was to review WWS sampling protocols, testing methods, analyses, and data interpretation approaches for WWS employed nationally and identify opportunities for standardizing practices, including the development of documentary standards or reference materials in the case of SARS-CoV-2 surveillance. Other WWS potential future threats to public health were also discussed. Several aspects of WWS were considered and each offers the opportunity for standards development. These areas included sampling strategies, analytical methods, and data reporting practices. Each of these areas converged on a common theme, the challenge of results comparability across facilities and jurisdictions. For sampling, the consensus solution was the development of documentary standards to guide appropriate sampling practices. In contrast, the predominant opportunity for analytical methods was reference material development, such as PCR-based standards and surrogate recovery controls. For data reporting practices, the need for establishing the minimal required metadata, a metadata vocabulary, and standardizing data units of measure including measurement threshold definitions was discussed. Beyond SARS-CoV-2 testing, there was general agreement that the WWS platform will continue to be a valuable tool for a wide range of public health threats and that future cross-sector engagements are needed to guide an enduring WWS capability.
Competing Interests: The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
(© 2022 The Author(s).)
Databáze: MEDLINE