SARS-CoV-2 surveillance of wastewater in small rural communities identifies lack of vaccine coverage as influence of omicron outbreak.

Publication date: Sep 01, 2025

Wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) can provide critical early warnings to aid public health, which can be particularly beneficial in rural communities with limited access to health care. Spikes of SARS-CoV-2 RNA concentration in wastewater have been used to represent infections in a community, but wastewater holds a wealth of information that has not been explored yet. The objectives of this research were to expand the use of WBE to 1) determine the dynamic of SARS-CoV-2 variants in rural communities, and 2) evaluate the relationship between community vaccination status and the outbreak of a variant. We quantified the concentration of SARS-CoV-2 RNA, as well as specific mutations that are consistent with Delta and Omicron in influent raw wastewater samples collected from wastewater treatment facilities (WWTFs) for five populations with

Semantics

Original Article