A comparison of precipitation and filtration-based SARS-CoV-2 recovery methods and the influence of temperature, turbidity, and surfactant load in urban wastewater

作者：Jessica L. Kevill, Cameron Pellett, Kata Farkas, Mathew R. Brown, Irene Bassano, Hubert Denise, James E. McDonald, Shelagh K. Malham, Jonathan Porter, Jonathan Warren, Nicholas Evens, Steve Paterson, Andrew C. Singer, Davey L. Jones · 发表于：The Science of The Total Environment · 年份：2021 · DOI：10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.151916 · 被引用次数：80 · 研究领域：SARS-CoV-2 detection and testing、SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 Research、COVID-19 Clinical Research Studies

Wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) has become a complimentary surveillance tool during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. Viral concentration methods from wastewater are still being optimised and compared, whilst viral recovery under different wastewater characteristics and storage temperatures remains poorly understood. Using urban wastewater samples, we tested three viral concentration methods; polyethylene glycol precipitation (PEG), ammonium sulphate precipitation (AS), and CP select™ InnovaPrep® (IP) ultrafiltration. We found no major difference in SARS-CoV-2 and faecal indicator virus (crAssphage) recovery from wastewater samples (n = 46) using these methods, PEG slightly (albeit non-significantly), outperformed AS and IP for SARS-CoV-2 detection, as a higher genome copies per litre (gc/l) was recorded for a larger proportion of samples. Next generation sequencing of 8 paired samples revealed non-significant differences in the quality of data between AS and IP, though IP data quality was slightly better and less variable. A controlled experiment assessed the impact of wastewater suspended solids (turbidity; 0-400 NTU), surfactant load (0-200 mg/l), and storage temperature (5-20 °C) on viral recovery using the AS and IP methods. SARS-CoV-2 recoveries were >20% with AS and <10% with IP in turbid samples, whilst viral recoveries for samples with additional surfactant were between 0-18% for AS and 0-5% for IP. Turbidity and sample storage temperature combined had no significant effe...