Abstract
Sewage surveillance is increasingly employed as a supplementary tool for COVID-19 control. Experiences learnt from large-scale trials could guide better interpretation of the sewage data for public health interventions. Here, we compared the performance of seven commonly used primer-probe sets in RT-qPCR and evaluated the usefulness in the sewage surveillance program in Hong Kong. All selected primer-probe sets reliably detected SARS-CoV-2 in pure water at 7 copies per μL. Sewage matrix did not influence RT-qPCR determination of SARS-CoV-2 concentrated from a small-volume sewage (30 mL) but introduced inhibitory impacts on a large-volume sewage (920 mL) with a ΔCt of 0.2-10.8. Diagnostic performance evaluation in finding COVID-19 cases showed that N1 was the best single primer-probe set, while the ORF1ab set is not recommended. Sewage surveillance using the N1 set for over 3200 samples effectively caught the outbreak trend and, importantly, had a 56% sensitivity and a 96% specificity in uncovering the signal sources from new cases and/or convalescent patients in the community. Our study paves the way for selecting detection primer-probe sets in wider applications in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Keywords: RT-qPCR; SARS-CoV-2; primer-probe sets; public health; sewage surveillance.
【저자키워드】 public health, SARS-CoV-2, RT-qPCR, Sewage surveillance, primer-probe sets, 【초록키워드】 COVID-19, Trial, COVID-19 pandemic, sensitivity, specificity, Surveillance, outbreak, Impact, Interpretation, Community, Public health interventions, sewage, Hong Kong, experience, convalescent patient, ORF1ab, COVID-19 case, inhibitory, Seven, selected, evaluated, introduced, increasingly, primer-probe set, 【제목키워드】 COVID-19, Test, sewage, Public,