Rusiñol Arantegui, MartaZammit, IanItarte, MartaForés, EvaMartínez-Puchol, SandraGironès Llop, RosinaBorrego, C.Corominas, Ll.Bofill Mas, Silvia2022-05-172022-05-172021-09-150048-9697https://hdl.handle.net/2445/185652Wastewater based epidemiology was employed to track the spread of SARS-CoV-2 within the sewershed areas of 10 wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) in Catalonia, Spain. A total of 185 WWTPs inflow samples were collected over the period consisting of both the first wave (mid-March to June) and the second wave (July to November). Concentrations of SARS-CoV-2 RNA (N1 and N2 assays) were quantified in these wastewaters as well as those of Human adenoviruses (HAdV) and JC polyomavirus (JCPyV), as indicators of human faecal contamination. SARS-CoV-2 N gene daily loads strongly correlated with the number of cases diagnosed one week after sampling i.e. wastewater levels were a good predictor of cases to be diagnosed in the immediate future. The conditions present at small WWTPs relative to larger WWTPs influence the ability to follow the pandemic. Small WWTPs (<24,000 inhabitants) had lower median loads of SARS-CoV-2 despite similar incidence of infection within the municipalities served by the different WWTP (but not lower loads of HAdV and JCPyV). The lowest incidence resulting in quantifiable SARS-CoV-2 concentration in wastewater differed between WWTP sizes, being 0.11 and 0.82 cases/1000 inhabitants for the large and small sized WWTP respectively. © 2021 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).10 p.application/pdfengcc-by-nc-nd (c) Rusiñol Arantegui, Marta et al., 2021https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/SARS-CoV-2Plantes de tractament d'aigües residualsSARS-CoV-2Sewage disposal plantinfo:eu-repo/semantics/article7132742022-05-16info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess