Browsing by Author "Reuter, Sonja Tamara"

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    Establishing wastewater surveillance for SARS-CoV-2 in Southern Saskatchewan
    (Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research, University of Regina, 2023-06) Reuter, Sonja Tamara; Hansmeier, Nicole; Chao, Tzu-Chiao; Yost, Christopher; Van Hamme, Jonathan
    Wastewater surveillance has become a crucial part in the monitoring of the COVID-19 pandemic. Infected people shed SARS-CoV-2 in their feces, therefore, virus levels in wastewater reflect the trends in infection numbers in the population that contributes to the wastewater. Wastewater surveillance offers information about the spread of SARS-CoV-2 independent of testing strategies and individual choices and therefore better reflects population health than individual testing. In this study we compared five RNA extraction kits and reagents and different enrichment methods for wastewater surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 RNA and determined that the solids fraction of wastewater was most suitable for RNA extraction using the AllPrep PowerViral DNA/RNA Kit by Qiagen. We also examined the impact of storage on wastewater samples and determined that while short-term storage does not affect the samples significantly, longer storage changes the measured viral levels. We then used our protocol to establish a wastewater surveillance for SARS-CoV-2 viral levels in Regina and nine other locations in Southern Saskatchewan, Canada. We observed that the three waves of COVID-19 during the study time were caused by the variants Alpha, Delta and Omicron and that the SARSCoV- 2 RNA levels in wastewater were a good reflection of the reported active COVID-19 case numbers.