Making waves: collaboration in the time of SARS-CoV-2 - rapid development of an international co-operation and wastewater surveillance database to support public health decision-making

The presence of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in wastewater was first reported in March 2020. Over the subsequent months, the potential for wastewater surveillance to contribute to COVID-19 mitigation programmes has been the focus of intense national and international research activities, gaining the attention of policy makers and the public. As a new application of an established methodology, focused collaboration between public health practitioners and wastewater researchers is essential to developing a common understanding on how, when and where the outputs of this non-invasive community-level approach can deliver actionable outcomes for public health authorities. Within this context, the NORMAN SCORE "SARS-CoV-2 in sewage" database provides a platform for rapid, open access data sharing, validated by the uploading of 276 data sets from nine countries to-date. Through offering direct access to underpinning meta-data sets (and describing its use in data interpretation), the NORMAN SCORE database is a resource for the development of recommendations on minimum data requirements for wastewater pathogen surveillance. It is also a tool to engage public health practitioners in discussions on use of the approach, providing an opportunity to build mutual understanding of the demand and supply for data and facilitate the translation of this promising research application into public health practice. [Abstract copyright: Copyright © 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Making Waves: Collaboration in the time of SARS-CoV-2 - rapid development of an international co-operation and wastewater surveillance database to support public health decision-making

The presence of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in wastewater was first reported in March 2020. Over the subsequent months, the potential for wastewater surveillance to contribute to COVID-19 mitigation programmes has been the focus of intense national and international research activities, gaining the attention of policy makers and the public. As a new application of an established methodology, focused collaboration between public health practitioners and wastewater researchers is essential to developing a common understanding on how, when and where the outputs of this non-invasive community-level approach can deliver actionable outcomes for public health authorities. Within this context, the NORMAN SCORE “SARS-CoV-2 in sewage” database provides a platform for rapid, open access data sharing, validated by the uploading of 276 data sets from nine countries to-date. Through offering direct access to underpinning meta-data sets (and describing its use in data interpretation), the NORMAN SCORE database is a resource for the development of recommendations on minimum data requirements for wastewater pathogen surveillance. It is also a tool to engage public health practitioners in discussions on use of the approach, providing an opportunity to build mutual understanding of the demand and supply for data and facilitate the translation of this promising research application into public health practice. © 2021 Elsevier Lt

Control strategies to combat dissemination of antibiotic resistance in urban water systems

The intensive use of antibiotics for medical, veterinary, or agricultural purposes results in the continuous release of antibiotics into the environment, leading to the increasingly widespread occurrence of antibiotic resistance. Although antibiotic resistance has been recognized as a major threat to human health worldwide, the related phenomenon occurring in natural and engineered environments has so far been largely overlooked. The urban (including industrial) water cycle, which connects urban life, agriculture, and the environment, is potentially a hot spot for the spread of antibiotic resistance. Therefore, better understanding of the distribution and transportation of antibiotic-resistant bacteria (ARB) and acquisition of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) in the urban water cycle is critically important to improve the control of this emerging environmental and human health challenge. In this book chapter, we comprehensively review the occurrence, transfer, and acquisition mechanisms of ARGs in the urban water cycle. Various methods that are used to monitor ARB and ARGs are compared in terms of their strengths and limitations. Opportunities for the development of real-time monitoring methods are discussed, along with possible control strategies for ARB and ARGs in urban water environments. We recommend that three major barriers should be developed to minimize or halt the spread of ARGs in urban water systems, including more efficient water disinfection, advanced wastewater treatment, and optimized sludge treatment processes