Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2022 Sep 22;12(1):15777.
doi: 10.1038/s41598-022-20076-z.

Municipal and neighbourhood level wastewater surveillance and subtyping of an influenza virus outbreak

Elisabeth Mercier  1 , Patrick M D'Aoust  1 , Ocean Thakali  1 , Nada Hegazy  1 , Jian-Jun Jia  1 , Zhihao Zhang  1 , Walaa Eid  2 , Julio Plaza-Diaz  2 , Md Pervez Kabir  1 , Wanting Fang  1 , Aaron Cowan  1 , Sean E Stephenson  2 , Lakshmi Pisharody  1 , Alex E MacKenzie  2 , Tyson E Graber  2 , Shen Wan  1 , Robert Delatolla  3
Affiliations

Municipal and neighbourhood level wastewater surveillance and subtyping of an influenza virus outbreak

Elisabeth Mercier et al. Sci Rep. .

Abstract

Recurrent influenza epidemics and pandemic potential are significant risks to global health. Public health authorities use clinical surveillance to locate and monitor influenza and influenza-like cases and outbreaks to mitigate hospitalizations and deaths. Currently, global integration of clinical surveillance is the only reliable method for reporting influenza types and subtypes to warn of emergent pandemic strains. The utility of wastewater surveillance (WWS) during the COVID-19 pandemic as a less resource intensive replacement or complement for clinical surveillance has been predicated on analyzing viral fragments in wastewater. We show here that influenza virus targets are stable in wastewater and partitions favorably to the solids fraction. By quantifying, typing, and subtyping the virus in municipal wastewater and primary sludge during a community outbreak, we forecasted a citywide flu outbreak with a 17-day lead time and provided population-level viral subtyping in near real-time to show the feasibility of influenza virus WWS at the municipal and neighbourhood levels in near real time using minimal resources and infrastructure.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Partitioning of measured endogenous IAV viral signal present in: (A) primary sludge (n = 6); (B) municipal wastewater (n = 12). Means and standard error are displayed. Where the standard deviation is too small, the error bars are not displayed. Each measurement is based on three technical triplicates for each biological replicate.
Figure 2
Figure 2
A comparison of both IAV and SARS-CoV-2 wastewater signals citywide in Ottawa, from samples harvested from the city’s WRRF. It was demonstrated that the detection of IAV in wastewater at the city-level (Feb. 13, 2022) occurred 17 days before the first clinical detection of IAV at any of the city’s hospitals or clinics.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Comparison of both IAV and SARS-CoV-2 wastewater signals at the neighbourhood level (A–neighbourhood #1, B–neighbourhood #2 and C–neighbourhood #3) in Ottawa, for samples harvested from the sewer system. The normalized IAV viral signal differed between neighbourhoods and with the citywide signal when population characteristics differed.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Process flowchart describing: (A) Processing of primary clarified sludge samples to examine the fractionation of influenza A viral signal within the supernatant and solid pellet with and without PEG addition, and (B) Processing of municipal wastewater to examine the fractionation of influenza A viral signal within the supernatant, filtered suspended solids and solid pellet.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. World Health Organization. Up to 650 000 people die of respiratory diseases linked to seasonal flu each year. (2018).
    1. Infection Prevention and Control Canada. Seasonal Influenza, Avian Influenza and Pandemic Influenza. (2014).
    1. Rolfes MA, et al. Annual estimates of the burden of seasonal influenza in the United States: A tool for strengthening influenza surveillance and preparedness. Influenza Other Respir. Viruses. 2018;12:132–137. doi: 10.1111/irv.12486. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Kumar M, et al. First proof of the capability of wastewater surveillance for COVID-19 in India through detection of genetic material of SARS-CoV-2. Sci. Total Environ. 2020;709:141326. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.141326. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Peccia J, et al. Measurement of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in wastewater tracks community infection dynamics. Nat. Biotechnol. 2020;38:1164–1167. doi: 10.1038/s41587-020-0684-z. - DOI - PMC - PubMed

Publication types