Wastewater-based Epidemiology: Poop Never Lies! - Webinar Series: Utilities Fight COVID-19

Although wastewater has been monitored for viruses and pollutants for years, the practice rose to prominence sharply during the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Studies have shown that environmental surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 signals, or biomarkers (typically RNA), helps determine both the prevalence of disease and the overall health of a community. As such, it could act as a low-cost early warning system to monitor resurgences or reimportations of disease into communities as a complementary tool to medical testing.In June 2020, as part of its COVID-19 webinar series, GWOPA/UN-Habitat and BMZ/GIZ facilitated a discussion between water utilities on wastewater monitoring. This paper presnets the takeaways from that discussion.