RAPID: Determine Community Disease Burden of COVID-19 by Probing Wastewater Microbiome

全球COVID-19大流行是一场紧迫的全球健康和经济危机。目前疫情的影响因感染疫情季节性再次发生的可能性而加剧。这种潜在的季节性循环对目前基于临床的疾病监测方法提出了巨大挑战，该方法不能充分检测无症状和轻度症状患者。由于未确诊的感染正在推动COVID-19大流行中的疾病传播，因此迫切需要替代方法来评估传播。为了直接满足这一需求，该项目将通过分析废水微生物组来开发评估社区感染流行率的科学，有望为微生物疾病监测提供快速，灵敏和全面的方法。成功的开发将使人们能够评估污水处理厂所服务的人群的感染率，包括那些症状轻微或没有症状的人。这种能力将通过真实的显示疾病在新的热点出现的地方，大大改善对流行病的监测。这些信息将为控制当前COVID-19大流行的干预策略提供信息，并帮助国家更有效地管理未来的疫情。此RAPID项目在应对COVID-19大流行方面有两个具体的研究目标。 第一个目标是开发和优化废水基质中包膜病毒（如冠状病毒）的高效浓缩和检测方法。鉴于水样品中病毒最常用的浓缩方法是针对无包膜病毒开发的，因此迫切需要这方面的知识。这一阶段研究的成功完成将填补一项重大技术空白，并大大提高检测和监测水和废水中SARS-CoV 2的能力。第二个目标是从受疾病影响的社区收集时间敏感的废水样本。废水将用于确定废水中SARS-CoV 2和其他包膜病毒的丰度、多样性和时间动态。这些数据将被分析以重建COVID-19社区传播的程度。该研究将产生急需的关于COVID-19社区传播的信息，并有助于验证基于废水的监测方法。如果成功，这项研究将提供一个新的途径，以保护公众健康的国家通过废水监测。这个奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得支持的评估使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准。

The global COVID-19 pandemic is an urgent global health and economic crisis. The impacts of the current outbreak are exacerbated by the potential for infection outbreaks to seasonally reoccur. This potential seasonal cycling presents a great challenge to the current clinic-based disease surveillance approach which does not adequately test asymptomatic and mildly symptomatic patients. There is a critical need for alternative methods to assess spread, as undiagnosed infections are driving disease transmission in the COVID-19 pandemic. To directly address this need, this project will develop the science to assess community infection prevalence by analyzing the wastewater microbiome, promising a rapid, sensitive, and comprehensive approach for microbial disease surveillance. Successful development will allow assessment of infection rates in the population served by the wastewater treatment plant, including those with mild or no symptoms. Such capabilities would dramatically improve surveillance of pandemics by indicating in real time where the disease is emerging in new hotspots. Such information would inform intervention strategies for controlling the current COVID-19 pandemic, and help the Nation manage future outbreaks more effectively. This RAPID project has two specific research objectives in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. The first objective is to develop and optimize a highly efficient concentration and detection method for enveloped viruses (like coronavirus) in the wastewater matrix. There is urgent need for this knowledge given that the most commonly used concentration methods for viruses in water samples were developed for the non-enveloped viruses. Successful completion of this phase of the research will thus fill a major technological gap and significantly advance the capability to detect and monitor the SARS-CoV2 in water and wastewater. The second objective is to collect time-sensitive wastewater samples from communities impacted by the disease. The wastewater will be used to determine the abundance, diversity, and temporal dynamics of SARS-CoV2 and other enveloped viruses in the wastewater. These data will be analyzed to reconstruct the extent of COVID-19 community transmission. The research will generate much-needed information on community transmission of COVID-19, as well as serve to validate the wastewater-based surveillance approach. If successful, this research will provide a new avenue to protect the public health of the Nation through wastewater surveillance.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.