Establishment of an infectivity assay for SARS-CoV-2 to manage risks derived from wastewater during COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

 Wastewater-based epidemiology for SARS-CoV-2, which routinely monitors the virus in wastewater, has been expected as a useful tool to track the dynamics of viral disease prevalence in a population level. However, there is a concern on the infectivity of SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater, which is one of the factors that hamper its widespread use. In the present study, we established an infectivity assay for SARS-CoV-2 based on virus cultivation using VeroE6-TMPRSS cells, which is applicable to investigation of SARS-CoV-2 infectivity in wastewater. Our method enables estimation of the amout of infectious SARS-CoV-2 from the observed SARS-CoV-2 RNA concentrations as determined by PCR, based on the quantitative analysis of the relationship between virus titer and RNA concentration.