Table 1.
Description of the reviewed studies with attention focused on coronavirus and/or surrogates (papers are listed in chronological order of publication).
| Author and date of publication | Type of study | Type of CoV or surrogate a | Aim of the study | Study design |
|||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| d | Type of water sample (n° of samples) | Virus concentration method | Virus detection method b | ||||
| Derbyshire and Brown (1978) | Field | Coronavirus growing on primary cell cultures | Virological characterization of environmental matrices impacted by livestock | 2-L | Cattle and pig slurry (n° 56) | Different virus concentration methods according to matrix type | Primary cell cultures of PK and EBK cells |
| 20-L | Runoff, surface waters and groundwaters (n° 102) | ||||||
| Duan et al. (2003) | In vitro | SARS-CoV strain P9 | Survival at room temperature in water and different surfaces (9 samplings over 120 h period assay) | 300-μL | sterilized water spiked with SARS-CoV to a final quantity of 106 TCID50 | NA | Infective assay on cell line Vero-E6 |
| Wang et al. (2005b) | In vitro | SARS-CoV | 1. Survival assay in various water matrices at 4 °C and 20 °C (9 samplings over 14 days period assay) | 100-ml | Different water samples spiked with SARS-CoV to a final quantity of 105 TCID50/ml:
|
NA | Infectivity assay onto Vero E6 cell line and RT-PCR |
|
2. Disinfection assay in wastewaters using sodium hypochlorite and chlorine dioxide | 100-ml | Domestic sewages spiked with SARS-CoV and phage f2 to a final quantity 101.75 TCID50/ml and 1.1 × 105 PFU/L, respectively | NA | Infectivity assay onto Vero E6 cell line | ||
| Wang et al. (2005c) | In vitro |
|
Recovery efficiency of virus concentration methods based on electropositive filter media particle | 100-ml | Hospital sewage samples spiked with SARS-CoV and phage f2 to a final quantity of 102–103 TCID50/ml for both | NA | Infectivity assay onto Vero E6 cell line |
| Field |
|
To investigate potential fecal-oral transmission of SARS-CoV | 2.5-L | Hospital sewage before disinfection (n° 5) | Electropositive filters | Both infectivity assay onto Vero E6 cell line and RT-PCR | |
| 25-L | Hospital sewage after disinfection (n° 5) | ||||||
| Casanova et al. (2009) | In vitro |
|
Survival assay in various water matrices at 4 °C and 23–25 °C (6 samplings over 49 days period assay) | 45-ml | Different water samples spiked with TGEV and MHV at a final quantity ∼105 MPN/ml and ∼107 MPN/ml, respectively:
|
NA | Infective assay on ST cell cultures for TGEV and DBT cell cultures for MHV. |
| Gundy et al. (2009) | In vitro |
|
Survival assay in various matrices at 23 °C and only for filtered tap water the assay was carried out also at 4 °C (6 samplings over 21 days period assay) | 30-ml | Different water samples spiked with HCoV and FIPV at a final quantity of 105 TCID50/ml for both:
|
NA | Infectivity assay on MRC-5 cell line for HCoV and CRFK cell line for FIPV |
| Fan et al. (2010) | In vitro | MHV strain A59 | Detection efficiency of a methodology based on spectroscopy | 1-ml | Deionized water samples spiked with MHV at a final quantity of 106-107 PFU/ml | NA | Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) followed by multivariate statistical analyses for the interpretation of SERS spectral data (specific for each virus strain) |
| Schwarte et al. (2011) | Field | Bovine CoV | To evaluate the effects of grazing management on sediment, phosphorus and pathogen loading | Not specified | Simulated runoff (n° 360) and cow feces (n° 90) | Not specified | RT-qPCR |
| Bibby et al. (2011) | Field | Human CoV | To develop an approach for describing the diversity of human pathogenic viruses in an environmentally isolated viral metagenome | 1-L | Treated sewage sludge (Class B biosolid) | Sample concentration according to standardized US procedure for virus concentration in sludge | Shotgun sequencing techniques |
| Bibby and Peccia (2013) | Field | Human CoV | To describe the human virus diversity in wastewater sample, and to understand infectious risks associated with land application | 250-ml | Untreated sewage sludge (n° 5) and treated sewage sludge (n° 5) | Sample concentration according to procedure described in literature | Shotgun sequencing techniques |
| Abd-Elmaksoud et al., 2014 | In vitro | Bovine CoV | Recovery efficiency using glass wool filter as technique for water samples concentration. The different turbidity is used to simulate agricultural runoff | 20-L | Tap water spiked with bovine CoV at a final concentration of 250 GC/L, and added with different quantity of dried agricultural soil to produce three different turbidity level | Glass wool filtration | RT-qPCR |
| Corsi et al. (2014) | Field | Bovine CoV | To examine the occurrence, hydrologic variability, and seasonal variability of human and bovine viruses in surface water | 20-L | River waters impacted by rural or urban runoff (n° 63) | Automatic sampling procedure and concentration based on prefiltration and glass wool filtration. | RT-qPCR |
| Casanova and Weaver (2015) | In vitro | Phage φ6 | Survival assay at 22 and 30 °C (10 samplings over 10 days period assay) | 45-ml | Pasteurized raw sewage spiked with φ6 at a final concentration of ∼107 PFU/ml | NA | Plaque assay |
| Ye et al. (2016) | In vitro |
|
|
30-ml | Pasteurized and unpasteurized raw sewage spiked with MHV and φ6 at a final concentration of 3 × 104 PFU/ml and 5 × 105 PFU/ml, respectively | NA |
|
| Christensen and Myrmel (2018) | In vitro | Bovine CoV | Removal efficiency of coagulation-filtration system at bench scale and using three different coagulant (zirconium, chitosan and polyaluminium chloride). | 400-ml | Wastewaters spiked with bovine CoV at a final concentration of 104 PCRU/ml | Centrifugation and filtration steps | Both infectivity assay based on HRT-18G and RT-qPCR |
| Blanco et al. (2019) | In vitro | TGEV strain PUR46-MAD | Recovery efficiency of an optimized methodology for virus concentration, based on glass wool filtration | 50-L | Surface waters spiked with TGEV at a final concentration of 5.7 × 106 TCID50/L | Glass wool filtration | Infectivity assay based on swine testis (ST) cell line |
| Field | Wild-type alpha/beta CoV | To verify the efficiency of the optimized procedure in detecting viruses (HAV and coronavirus) in natural environment | 20-L | Surface waters (n° 21) | Glass wool concentration with an optimization set up in the in vitro study using TEGV | Semi-nested RT-PCR for wild-type alpha/beta CoV and sequencing | |
| Ahmed et al. (2020) | Filed | SARS-CoV-2 | - To monitor SARS-CoV-2 in a pumping station and WWTPs, after first COVID-19 cases in Australia - To estimate COVID-19 prevalence in the study area from SARS-CoV-2 data in wastewaters (Wastewater-based epidemiology) |
100-200-ml | Raw sewages (n° 9). | Automatic 24h sampling procedure and concentration based on different methods: - Electronegative membranes; - Ultrafiltration (cut-off 10 kDa) |
RT-qPCR and sequencing |
| Wang et al. (2020) | Field | SARS-CoV-2 | To monitor SARS-CoV-2 in a hospital setting for COVID-19 patients (surface, sewage, personal protective equipment) | Not specified | Wastewater at different step of the treatment in a disinfection pool: untreated (n° 3), partially treated (n° 1), treated (n° 1). | Not specified | RT-qPCR and infectivity assay onto Vero E6 cell line |
| Medema et al. (2020) (pre-print on medRxiv ∗) | Field | SARS-CoV 2 | To monitor SARS-CoV-2 in WWTP from cities and Schiphol Airport, before and after first COVID-19 cases in The Netherlands | 250-ml | Raw sewages (n° 24) | Automatic 24h sampling procedure and concentration by ultrafiltration (cut-off 100 kDa) | RT-PCR |
| Nemudryi et al. (2020) (pre-print on medRxiv ∗) | Field | SARS-CoV-2 | To monitor SARS-CoV-2 in municipal wastewaters, after first COVID-19 cases in USA (Montana) To determine the phylogenetic origin of SARS-CoV-2 |
500-ml | Raw sewages (n° 7 in triplicate) | Two different sampling strategy (manual and automatic 24h samplings) and concentration by ultrafiltration (cut-off 10 kDa) | RT-qPCR and sequencing |
| Wu et al. (2020) (pre-print on medRxiv ∗) | Field | SARS-CoV 2 |
|
Not specified | Raw sewages (n° 14) | Automatic 24h sampling procedure, filtration on 0.2 μm membrane and centrifugation with polyethylene glycol 8000 | RT-qPCR and sequencing |
| Wurtzer et al. (2020) (pre-print on medRxiv ∗) | Field | SARS-CoV-2 | To monitor SARS-CoV-2 in urban WWTP after first COVID-19 cases in France | 11-ml | Wastewater samples both raw (n° 23) and treated (n° 8) | Ultracentrifugation (details not provided) | RT-qPCR |
∗ Pre-prints means preliminary reports that have not been peer-reviewed and retrieved from medRxiv database.
a
FIPV = Feline Infectious Peritonitis Virus; HCoV = Human coronavirus; MHV = Murine hepatitis virus; NA = not applicable; TGEV = Transmissible gastroenteritis virus.
b
CRFK = Crandell Reese feline kidney; DBT = delayed brain tumor; EBK = embryonic bovine kidney; HRT = human rectal tumor; MRC-5 are fetal human lung fibroblast; PK = pig kidney; ST = swine testicular.