Monitoring of SARS-CoV-2 Variants by Wastewater-Based Surveillance as a Sustainable and Pragmatic Approach—A Case Study of Jaipur (India)

Wastewater-based surveillance successfully identified the emergence of the B.1.617.2 variant of SARS-CoV-2 in Jaipur, India, nearly two months earlier than clinical case reports. This study demonstrates that sewage monitoring can predict the advent of epidemiologically significant variants with high genome coverage (94.39%), providing a faster and more sustainable alternative to traditional clinical genomic surveillance. By analyzing samples from 11 wastewater treatment plants between February and June 2021, researchers detected the B.1 variant in late February and the B.1.617.2 variant in early March, correlating with later clinical data. The approach offers a pragmatic tool for public health decision-making by tracking viral mutations and strain diversity in real time.

Nag, A., Arora, S., Sinha, V., Meena, E., Sutaria, D., Gupta, A. B., & Medicherla, K. M. (2022). Monitoring of SARS-CoV-2 Variants by Wastewater-Based Surveillance as a Sustainable and Pragmatic Approach—A Case Study of Jaipur (India). Water, 14(3), 297. https://doi.org/10.3390/w14030297