SARS-CoV-2 Wastewater-Based Epidemiology in Sanitation Settings in Africa

Fatma Guerfali of Institut Pasteur de Tunis in Tunisia and Jesse Gitaka of Mount Kenya University in Kenya, will implement wastewater SARS-CoV-2 surveillance in diverse sanitation settings in Kenya and Tunisia to help determine the true number of people infected with SARS-CoV-2, which is currently underestimated. The detection of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in sewage can be used to monitor virus circulation in the population. However, this is more challenging in settings with diverse sanitation practices, such as in many parts of Africa. They will quantify SARS-CoV-2 RNA in untreated wastewater from diverse sanitation settings and correlate them with clinical testing to determine their accuracy. They will also develop epidemiological models using a web-based informatics platform, which integrates geo-spatial, temporal and SARS-CoV-2 RNA analysis, to test the performance of longitudinal SARS-CoV-2 RNA wastewater surveillance from hospitals and public sanitation systems.