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Water and wastewater as potential sources of SARS-CoV-2 transmission: a systematic review

  • Hatam Godini ORCID logo , Edris Hoseinzadeh ORCID logo and Hooshyar Hossini ORCID logo
Published/Copyright: February 17, 2021

Abstract

An important group of viruses are Coronaviruses that affect the health of people worldwide, in particular the acute respiratory syndrome. The present work has addressed the updated literature on the topic of coronaviruses transmission through water and wastewater as well as identified gaps in research to inform future studies. In total, 198 articles were selected, then after screening, 48 eligible studies were fully reviewed. Accordingly, the studies showed that the coronavirus has been isolated and identified from water as well as wastewater. The results of researches show that the presence of SARS-Co-2 virus in municipal wastewater is possible due to the excretion of the virus in human feces. In addition, the SARS-Co-2 virus was isolated from contaminated water and rivers, but there is insufficient evidence for virus transmission by water and wastewater. Water and wastewater treatment methods are able to reduce the pollution load caused by this virus in water sources. Water disinfection has an effective role in removing it from water and wastewater sources. Due to the short period of time in the global pandemic and the small number of studies in this field, further studies are needed to make a definite statement about the transferability of virus in water and wastewater.


Corresponding author: Dr. Edris Hoseinzadeh, PhD, Environmental Health Engineering Department, Faculty of Health, Saveh University of Medical Sciences, Yas st, 15th Ave, Kaveh Industrial City, P.O. Box: 3914334911, Saveh, Markazi Province, Iran, Phone/Fax: +98 8642343395, E-mail:

Acknowledgment

We would like to express our special thanks of gratitude to Dr. Farshid Mohammadi from Hamadan University of Medical Sciences for his valuable comments.

  1. Research funding: This review study was not funded by any agency or organization.

  2. Author contributions: HG did conception and design, acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data, and writing. EH did conception and design, interpretation of data, and drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content. HH did revise it critically for important intellectual content and final approval of the version to be published.

  3. Competing interests: The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

  4. Informed consent: Not applicable.

  5. Ethical approval: Not applicable.

  6. Data availability statement: All datasets generated for this study are included in the article/supplementary material.

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Received: 2020-11-15
Accepted: 2021-01-20
Published Online: 2021-02-17
Published in Print: 2021-09-27

© 2021 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

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