Version 1
: Received: 13 May 2021 / Approved: 17 May 2021 / Online: 17 May 2021 (10:07:04 CEST)
How to cite:
Bivins, A.; Lott, M.; Shaffer, M.; Wu, Z.; North, D.; Lipp, E.; Bibby, K. Building-Level Wastewater Monitoring for COVID-19 Using Tampon Swabs and RT-LAMP for Rapid SARS-Cov-2 RNA Detection. Preprints2021, 2021050381. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202105.0381.v1
Bivins, A.; Lott, M.; Shaffer, M.; Wu, Z.; North, D.; Lipp, E.; Bibby, K. Building-Level Wastewater Monitoring for COVID-19 Using Tampon Swabs and RT-LAMP for Rapid SARS-Cov-2 RNA Detection. Preprints 2021, 2021050381. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202105.0381.v1
Bivins, A.; Lott, M.; Shaffer, M.; Wu, Z.; North, D.; Lipp, E.; Bibby, K. Building-Level Wastewater Monitoring for COVID-19 Using Tampon Swabs and RT-LAMP for Rapid SARS-Cov-2 RNA Detection. Preprints2021, 2021050381. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202105.0381.v1
APA Style
Bivins, A., Lott, M., Shaffer, M., Wu, Z., North, D., Lipp, E., & Bibby, K. (2021). Building-Level Wastewater Monitoring for COVID-19 Using Tampon Swabs and RT-LAMP for Rapid SARS-Cov-2 RNA Detection. Preprints. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202105.0381.v1
Chicago/Turabian Style
Bivins, A., Erin Lipp and Kyle Bibby. 2021 "Building-Level Wastewater Monitoring for COVID-19 Using Tampon Swabs and RT-LAMP for Rapid SARS-Cov-2 RNA Detection" Preprints. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202105.0381.v1
Abstract
Community-level wastewater monitoring for severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) RNA has demonstrated useful correlation with both coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) case numbers and clinical testing positivity. Wastewater monitoring on college campuses has demonstrated promising predictive capacity for the presence and absence of COVID-19 cases. However, to date, such monitoring has largely relied upon composite or grab samples and reverse transcription quantitative PCR (RT-qPCR) techniques, which limits the accessibility and scalability of wastewater monitoring. In this study, we piloted a workflow that uses tampons as passive swabs for collection and reverse transcription loop-mediated isothermal amplification (RT-LAMP) to detect SARS-CoV-2 RNA in wastewater. Results for the developed workflow were available same day, with a time to result following tampon swab collection of approximately three hours. The RT-LAMP 95% limit of detection (76 gene copies reaction-1) was greater than RT-droplet digital PCR (ddPCR; 3.3 gene copies reaction-1). Nonetheless, during a building-level wastewater monitoring campaign conducted in the midst of weekly clinical testing of all students, the workflow demonstrated a same-day positive predictive value (PPV) of 33% and negative predictive value (NPV) of 80% for incident COVID-19 cases. The NPV is comparable to that reported by wastewater monitoring using RT-qPCR. These observations suggest that even with lower analytical sensitivity the tampon swab and RT-LAMP workflow offers a cost-effective and rapid approach that could be leveraged for scalable same-day building-level wastewater monitoring for COVID-19.
Environmental and Earth Sciences, Water Science and Technology
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
