Persistence of SARS-CoV-2 in Water and Wastewater

Aaron Bivins; Justin Greaves; Robert Fischer; Kwe Claude Yinda; Warish Ahmed; Masaaki Kitajima; Vincent J Munster; Kyle Bibby

doi:10.1021/acs.estlett.0c00730

Persistence of SARS-CoV-2 in Water and Wastewater

Environ Sci Technol Lett. 2020 Oct 7;7(12):937-942. doi: 10.1021/acs.estlett.0c00730. eCollection 2020 Dec 8.

Authors

Aaron Bivins^{1

2}, Justin Greaves¹, Robert Fischer³, Kwe Claude Yinda³, Warish Ahmed⁴, Masaaki Kitajima⁵, Vincent J Munster³, Kyle Bibby¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering & Earth Sciences, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana 46556, United States.
² Environmental Change Initiative, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana 46566, United States.
³ Laboratory of Virology, Rocky Mountain Laboratories (RML), National Institutes of Health, Hamilton, Montana 59840, United States.
⁴ CSIRO Land and Water, Ecosciences Precinct, 41 Boggo Road, Dutton Park, QLD 4102, Australia.
⁵ Division of Environmental Engineering, Hokkaido University, North 13 West 8, Kita-ku, Sapporo, Hokkaido 060-8628, Japan.

PMID: 37566354
DOI: 10.1021/acs.estlett.0c00730

Abstract

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) RNA is frequently detected in the feces of infected individuals. While infectious SARS-CoV-2 has not previously been identified in wastewater, infectious SARS-CoV-2 has been isolated from the feces of at least one patient, raising concerns about the presence of infectious SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater. The fate and inactivation characteristics of SARS-CoV-2 in water and wastewater are unknown, with current inactivation estimates based on surrogate models. In this study, the persistence of SARS-CoV-2 infectivity and RNA signal was determined in water and wastewater. The times for 90% reduction (T₉₀) of viable SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater and tap water at room temperature were 1.5 and 1.7 days, respectively. In high-starting titer (10⁵ TCID₅₀ mL^-1) experiments, infectious virus persisted for the entire 7-day sampling time course. In wastewater at 50 and 70 °C, the observed T₉₀ values for infectious SARS-CoV-2 were decreased to 15 and 2 min, respectively. SARS-CoV-2 RNA was found to be significantly more persistent than infectious SARS-CoV-2, indicating that the environmental detection of RNA alone does not substantiate risk of infection.