Wastewater-Based Epidemiology for Infection Surveillance in a Residential High School

Abstract

Wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) is a technique used to assess the health of a population by analyzing the relative concentrations of certain substances within wastewater. The COVID-19 pandemic heightened interest in WBE as a cost-effective, anonymous, and accessible tool for tracking community-wide trends of respiratory viruses such as Influenza A & B and RSV. However, questions remain about its applicability to other pathogens with transmission patterns. This study established a wastewater monitoring system at the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy (IMSA), a residential high school with 650 students. Due to the close living and eating conditions, respiratory infections spread rapidly, making IMSA an ideal setting to assess WBE’s effectiveness for infection surveillance without individualized sampling. The campus consists of seven residential halls and one main academic building, allowing for targeted wastewater analysis. Over the 2024-2025 academic year, we used passive sampling devices to collect untreated wastewater weekly from manholes, extracting nucleic acids, and quantifying COVID-19, Flu A/B, RSV, Norovirus I/II, Adenovirus, and common Coronaviruses via PCR. Samples are banked for future retrospective studies. In this project, we will present a descriptive analysis of our findings, their implications for infection control, and our plans for expanding the study in future years