Fig. 2.

Specificity and sensitivity of viral (A) M-gene, (B) RdRP-gene, (C) E-gene and (D) N-gene RT-qPCR with respect to control C1 sampled in July 2019 before the known onset of the pandemics in Germany, untreated sewage P5, P11, P13 sampled during the pandemics, SARS-CoV-2 control, and two other human coronaviruses HCoV-229E and SARS-CoV. Results are from wastewater samples measured in duplicates in a single PCR. Standard curve for M-gene PCR was calculated using Bio-Rad CFX Manager software with E = 90.8%, R² = 0.996 and slope = −3.565. Efficiencies of other primer pairs were not calculated by serial dilution.