A wastewater biosensor enabling detailed COVID-19 population surveillance.

英国政府对新冠肺炎疫情的应对建立在科学证据和详细分析的基础上。例如，COVID19国家检测战略强调了强有力的全人口监测方案(支柱4)的极端重要性，以了解感染率以及病毒如何在全国传播。这种知识直接为关键决策提供信息，支柱4目前依赖于最近启动的一项大规模人口测试方案，该方案使用每周/每月对多达300 000人进行拭子测试。这种方法不仅具有侵入性和资源密集型，而且还完全依赖于公众的遵守，特别昂贵(仅靠公共激励每年就有1.25亿英镑)，而且测量0.5%的人口，只提供有限的地理分辨率。相比之下，废水监测以前曾用于检测和缓解疾病爆发，最近的研究证明，SARS-CoV-2被排入废水系统，突出了一个易于获取的样本来源，可以产生实时的地理详细人口水平信息的新冠肺炎流行。在实验室对废水进行RT-PCR分析以检测SARS-CoV-2是可能的，但在英国整个废水处理地点网络中定期大规模运行这种方法是非常耗费资源的。一个简单的SARS-CoV-2废水监测设备，可供当前现场人员使用，或整合到现场自动废水采样系统中，将提供一个具有成本效益的无与伦比的新冠肺炎流行详细数据来源。令人兴奋的是，这可以提供一个强大和持久的本地热点实时预警系统，以及丰富的数据集，从这些数据集可以确定特定地理位置的社区级政府政策，可以及早检测未来的峰值，并监测大规模疫苗交付和对策计划的有效性。这笔赠款与行业合作伙伴共同设计，旨在证明SARS-CoV-2生物传感器作为废水监测设备的概念，并展示一个在真实废水样本上操作的简单工作原型。快速交付简单工作原型的能力得到了支撑科学的高度成熟(生物传感器系统建立在以前BBSRC/EPSRC投资的基础上)的支持，以及该项目直接进入朴茨茅斯大学独特的环境技术现场站(ETF)。ETF在一个全面运营的废水处理厂提供研究设施、废水样本和适当的处理技术。行业合作伙伴对这项工作感到兴奋，并将积极参与该项目，特别是原型开发阶段。他们热衷于支持快速开采和设想的对英国整体影响的途径，并通过在英国的废水处理场所网络中部署约18,000个SARS-CoV-2监测设备来实现全部好处。展望未来，该监测设备的更广泛应用是巨大的。它不仅可以被改造用于欠发达国家的废水系统，而且生物传感器系统也可以被改变，以应对病毒突变或其他新出现的病毒威胁。进一步的工作将使其能够被部署，以支持更广泛的环境监测应用，或作为一种简单的检测/诊断工具。

The UK Government is basing its response to the Covid-19 pandemic on scientific evidence and detailed analysis. For example, the COVID19 National Testing Strategy emphasises the critical importance of robust population-wide surveillance programmes (pillar 4) to understand the rate of infection, and how the virus is spreading across the country. This knowledge directly informs critical decision making and pillar 4 is currently reliant on a recently initiated mass population testing programme using weekly/monthly swab testing of up to 300,000 people. This approach is not only invasive and resource intensive, but it also entirely reliant on public compliance, exceptionally expensive (> £125m per annum on public incentives alone) and measuring <0.5% of the population, offers only limited geographical resolution. In contrast, wastewater surveillance has previously been used to detect and mitigate disease outbreaks and recent research has evidenced that SARS-CoV-2 is excreted into the wastewater system, highlighting an easy to access sample source which could yield real-time geographically detailed population level information of COVID-19 prevalence. RT-PCR analysis of wastewater to detect SARS-CoV-2 is possible in the laboratory, but operating this approach regularly at scale across the UKs network of wastewater sites is exceptionally resource intensive. A simple SARS-CoV-2 wastewater monitoring device that can be used by current site personnel, or incorporated into on-site automated wastewater sampling systems, would offer a cost-effective unparalleled source of detailed data on COVID-19 prevalence. Excitingly, this could provide a robust and enduring real-time warning system of local hot spots, as well as a rich dataset from which geographically specific community-level Governmental policies can be determined, future peaks can be detected early and the effectiveness of a large-scale vaccine delivery and countermeasure programmes monitored.Co-designed with industry partners, this grant aims to prove the concept of a SARS-CoV-2 biosensor as a wastewater monitoring device and demonstrate a simple working prototype operating on real wastewater samples. The ability to rapidly deliver a simple working prototype is supported by the high maturity of the underpinning science (the biosensor system builds on previous BBSRC/EPSRC investment) and the project's direct access to The University of Portsmouth's unique Environmental Technology Field Station (ETFS). The ETFS offers research facilities, wastewater samples and appropriate processing technology at a fully-operational wastewater-works. Industry partners are excited about this work and will be actively engaged in the project, particularly the prototype development stage. They are keen to support rapid exploitation and the envisaged pathway to UK impact as a whole, and the realisation of the full benefit, is through the deployment of ~18,000 SARS-CoV-2 monitoring devices across the UK's network of wastewater sites.Looking to the future, the broader application of the monitoring device is enormous. Not only could it be adapted for use on wastewater systems in less-developed countries, but the biosensor system could be altered to respond to viral mutations or other emerging viral threats. Further work would allow it to be deployed to support wider environmental monitoring applications or as a simple detection/diagnostic tool.