Wastewater-based epidemiological surveillance to monitor the prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 in developing countries with onsite sanitation facilities

Wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) has emerged as a valuable approach for forecasting disease outbreaks in developed countries with a centralized sewage infrastructure. On the other hand, due to the absence of well-defined and systematic sewage networks, WBE is challenging to implement in developing countries like Bangladesh where most people live in rural areas. Identification of appropriate locations for rural Hotspot Based Sampling (HBS) and urban Drain Based Sampling (DBS) are critical to enable WBE based monitoring system. We investigated the best sampling locations from both urban and rural areas in Bangladesh after evaluating the sanitation infrastructure for forecasting COVID-19 prevalence. A total of 168 wastewater samples were collected from 14 districts of Bangladesh during each of the two peak pandemic seasons.…