Document Type
Article
Publication Date
4-9-2024
Department
Medicine
Abstract
Background
Despite wide scale assessments, it remains unclear how large-scale severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) vaccination affected the wastewater concentration of the virus or the overall disease burden as measured by hospitalization rates.
Methods
We used weekly SARS-CoV-2 wastewater concentration with a stratified random sampling of seroprevalence, and linked vaccination and hospitalization data, from April 2021βAugust 2021 in Jefferson County, Kentucky (USA). Our susceptible (S" role="presentation" style="box-sizing: inherit; display: inline-block; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; word-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: normal; text-wrap-mode: nowrap; float: none; direction: ltr; max-width: none; max-height: none; min-width: 0px; min-height: 0px; border: 0px; padding: 0px; margin: 0px; position: relative;">π), vaccinated (V" role="presentation" style="box-sizing: inherit; display: inline-block; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; word-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: normal; text-wrap-mode: nowrap; float: none; direction: ltr; max-width: none; max-height: none; min-width: 0px; min-height: 0px; border: 0px; padding: 0px; margin: 0px; position: relative;">π), variant-specific infected (I1" role="presentation" style="box-sizing: inherit; display: inline-block; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; word-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: normal; text-wrap-mode: nowrap; float: none; direction: ltr; max-width: none; max-height: none; min-width: 0px; min-height: 0px; border: 0px; padding: 0px; margin: 0px; position: relative;">πΌ1 and I2" role="presentation" style="box-sizing: inherit; display: inline-block; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; word-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: normal; text-wrap-mode: nowrap; float: none; direction: ltr; max-width: none; max-height: none; min-width: 0px; min-height: 0px; border: 0px; padding: 0px; margin: 0px; position: relative;">πΌ2), recovered (R" role="presentation" style="box-sizing: inherit; display: inline-block; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; word-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: normal; text-wrap-mode: nowrap; float: none; direction: ltr; max-width: none; max-height: none; min-width: 0px; min-height: 0px; border: 0px; padding: 0px; margin: 0px; position: relative;">π ), and seropositive (T" role="presentation" style="box-sizing: inherit; display: inline-block; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; word-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: normal; text-wrap-mode: nowrap; float: none; direction: ltr; max-width: none; max-height: none; min-width: 0px; min-height: 0px; border: 0px; padding: 0px; margin: 0px; position: relative;">π) model (SVI2RT" role="presentation" style="box-sizing: inherit; display: inline-block; line-height: normal; font-size-adjust: none; word-spacing: normal; overflow-wrap: normal; text-wrap-mode: nowrap; float: none; direction: ltr; max-width: none; max-height: none; min-width: 0px; min-height: 0px; border: 0px; padding: 0px; margin: 0px; position: relative;">πππΌ2π π) tracked prevalence longitudinally. This was related to wastewater concentration.
Results
Here we show the 64% county vaccination rate translate into about a 61% decrease in SARS-CoV-2 incidence. The estimated effect of SARS-CoV-2 Delta variant emergence is a 24-fold increase of infection counts, which correspond to an over 9-fold increase in wastewater concentration. Hospitalization burden and wastewater concentration have the strongest correlation (rβ=β0.95) at 1 week lag.
Conclusions
Our study underscores the importance of continuing environmental surveillance post-vaccine and provides a proof-of-concept for environmental epidemiology monitoring of infectious disease for future pandemic preparedness.
Original Publication Information
Holm, R.H., Rempala, G.A., Choi, B. et al. Dynamic SARS-CoV-2 surveillance model combining seroprevalence and wastewater concentrations for post-vaccine disease burden estimates. Commun Med 4, 70 (2024).
ThinkIR Citation
Holm, Rochelle H.; Rempala, Grzegorz A.; Choi, Boseung; Brick, J. Michael; Amraotkar, Alok R.; Keith, Rachel J.; Rouchka, Eric C.; Chariker, Julia H.; Palmer, Kenneth E.; Smith, Ted; and Bhatnagar, Aruni, "Dynamic SARS-CoV-2 surveillance model combining seroprevalence and wastewater concentrations for post-vaccine disease burden estimates" (2024). Faculty and Staff Scholarship. 982.
https://ir.library.louisville.edu/faculty/982
DOI
10.1038/s43856-024-00494-y
ORCID
0000-0001-8849-1390
Comments
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