Implementing Building-Level SARS-CoV-2 Wastewater Surveillance on a University Campus

Gibas, C. J.; Lambirth, K.; Mittal, N.; Juel, M. A. I.; Bharati Barua, V.; Roppolo Brazell, L.; Hinton, K.; Lontai, J.; Stark, N.; Young, I.; Quach, C.; Russ, M.; Kauer, J.; Nicolosi, B.; Akella, S.; Tang, W.; Chen, D.; Schlueter, J.; Munir, M.

The COVID-19 pandemic has been a source of ongoing challenges and presents an increased risk of illness in group environments, including jails, long term care facilities, schools, and, of course, residential college campuses. Early reports that the SARS-CoV-2 virus was detectable in wastewater in advance of confirmed cases sparked widespread interest in wastewater based epidemiology (WBE) as a tool for mitigation of COVID-19 outbreaks. One hypothesis was that wastewater surveillance might provide a cost-effective alternative to other more expensive approaches such as pooled and random testing of groups. In this paper, we report the outcomes of a wastewater surveillance pilot program at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, a large urban university with a substantial population of students living in on-campus dormitories. Surveillance was conducted at the building level on a thrice-weekly schedule throughout the university's fall residential semester. In multiple cases, wastewater surveillance enabled identification of asymptomatic COVID-19 cases that were not detected by other components of the campus monitoring program, which also included in-house contact tracing, symptomatic testing, scheduled testing of student athletes, and daily symptom reporting. In the context of all cluster events reported to the University community during the fall semester, wastewater-based testing events resulted in identification of smaller clusters than events triggered by other means. This includes identification of single asymptomatic individuals in dorms with total resident populations of 150-200. While the strategy described was developed for COVID-19, it is likely to be broadly applicable to mitigation of future pandemics in universities and other group-living environments.