RCN: Wastewater Surveillance for SARS-CoV-2 and Emerging Public Health Threats

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic remains an urgent national and global threat to public health. Wastewater surveillance (WWS) has emerged as a versatile and complementary platform to existing clinical tools for monitoring and tracking the spread and transmission of COVID-19 in communities. The basic premise of WSS is that the detection and quantification of microbial and viral biomarkers extracted from samples of untreated wastewater can be used to monitor the onset, spread and community transmission of infectious pathogens such as the SARS-CoV-2 virus and its variants. The overarching goal of this Research Coordination Network (RCN) is to support the large community of practitioners and stakeholders that employ WWS as a public health monitoring tool. To advance this goal, the core investigators of this RCN and their national/international partners will integrate their expertise and leverage their resources to address critical knowledge gaps and needs in WSS including improved analytical and sampling methods and more effective collaboration, communication and information sharing protocols/tools among researchers, practitioners, and public health stakeholders. The successful completion of this project will benefit society through the development and dissemination of new tools and protocols to support the large community of practitioners that employ WWS to monitor SARS-CoV-2 and other pathogens, including those capable of causing future pandemics. Additional benefits to society will be achieved through workforce development including the mentoring of two post-doctoral research fellows at the University of Notre Dame and Howard University. Early success in the use of wastewater surveillance (WSS) during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States has led to the establishment of a National Wastewater Surveillance System. Although the use of WWS has provided critical data and valuable insight into the spread and transmission of SARS-CoV-2, much work remains to be done to enable quantitative estimates, predictions, and actionable public health recommendations from the analysis of the data collected during a community wastewater surveillance program. This NSF Research Coordination Network (RCN) will address these critical knowledge gaps. The RCN builds upon the accomplishments of a previous NSF EAGER award that established a network of WWS researchers and practitioners from academia, government agencies, non-governmental organizations, and industry. The new RCN will advance its research, education, and workforce development goals through the implementation of five synergistic activities including 1) Monthly seminar series, 2) Quarterly topical workshops, 3) Development of a community-led 'Wiki' on the state of the science of WWS, 4) Annual wastewater surveillance training bootcamp, and 5) Annual virtual RCN conference with researchers, practitioners, and public health decision-makers. Through this award, the RCN investigators and their partners will facilitate and promote collaboration and communication among researchers, practitioners, and public health policy and decision-makers to advance next generation WWS for pandemic preparedness and prevention. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.