SARS-CoV-2 in Wastewater? Stratified Random Sampling Provides Clearer Picture

Monitoring wastewater for SARS-CoV-2 is the new and innovative source for real-time detection of the virus in a community. Typically, the data have been gathered through convenience testing of persons who report their test results to official local government sources. New research, however, indicates that incorporating stratified randomized sampling of adults in the community into the collection design process provides more reliable data on prevalence. Using the randomly sampled adults in a regression model with wastewater concentrations found that wastewater concentrations provide good estimates of prevalence rates of adults, including peaks and troughs of infection.

Learn more about the findings from Quantifying the relationship between sub-population wastewater samples and community-wide SARS-CoV-2 seroprevalence, which appears in a recent issue of Science of the Total Environment. J. Michael Brick, Ph.D., a Westat Senior Vice President, Statistical Sciences and Research, is among the article’s coauthors.