Wastewater-based epidemiology is widely applied in Austria since April 2020 to monitor the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. With a steadily increasing number of monitored wastewater facilities, 123 plants covering roughly 70 % of the 9 million population were monitored as of August 2022. In this study, the SARS-CoV-2 viral concentrations in raw sewage were analysed to infer short-term hospitalisation occupancy. The temporal lead of wastewater-based epidemiological time series over hospitalisation occupancy levels facilitates the construction of forecast models. Data pre-processing techniques are presented, including the approach of comparing multiple decentralised wastewater signals with aggregated and centralised clinical data. Time‑lead quantification was performed using cross-correlation analysis and coefficient of determination optimisation approaches. Multivariate regression models were successfully applied to infer hospitalisation bed occupancy. The results show a predictive potential of viral loads in sewage towards Covid-19 hospitalisation occupancy, with an average lead time towards ICU and non-ICU bed occupancy between 14.8-17.7 days and 8.6-11.6 days, respectively. The presented procedure provides access to the trend and tipping point behaviour of pandemic dynamics and allows the prediction of short-term demand for public health services. The results showed an increase in forecast accuracy with an increase in the number of monitored wastewater treatment plants. Trained models are sensitive to changing variant types and require recalibration of model parameters, likely caused by immunity by vaccination and/or infection. The utilised approach displays a practical and rapidly implementable application of wastewater-based epidemiology to infer hospitalisation occupancy.
Keywords: Bed occupancy; Hospitalisation; SARS-CoV-2; Wastewater-based epidemiology.
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