Introduction: Wastewater-based epidemiology can determine the scale of a mpox epidemic and thus is a promising additional tool that can complete data gathered by the clinical monitoring approach and predict more accurately the development and progress of the current mpox outbreak.
Methods: We collected daily average samples from two wastewater treatment plants (WTPs): Central and Left-Bank, in Poznan, Poland from July to December 2022. The mpox DNA was detected using real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and compared with the number of hospitalizations.
Results: We detected the mpox DNA in the Central WTP in weeks 29, 43 and 47 and in the Left-Bank WTP mostly from mid-September till the end of October. A total of 22 mpox patients were reported by the public health authority from July to December 2022, with the highest number of hospitalized individuals from mid-July to mid-August. The mpox virus detection does not correlate with the number of hospitalizations in Poznan, Poland.
Conclusions: Our results suggest that the scale of the mpox epidemic is underestimated, and many mpox virus infected individuals are not identified by the public health authority.
【저자키워드】 Poland, Wastewater., Epidemic, mpox, Mpox virus,