Surveillance and Testing of SARS-CoV-2

During the COVID-19 pandemic, testing for and surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 viral outbreak has been both important and controversial.

Starting on March 19, 2020, wastewater in the New Haven, Connecticut area was tracked and tested by Yale University researchers.¹⁾ Published results of this program showed such wastewater surveillance to predict percentage of positive tests 0 to 2 days ahead, hospital admissions by 1 to 4 days, and magnitude of positive test results 6 to 8 days ahead of reporting date.²⁾

Boston, Massachusetts wastewater samples show substantially higher infection rates than official case counts.³⁾

During the pandemic, one of the methods for distinguishing between variants has been the proxy testing for “expected” sequences of the S-gene, which encodes for the spike protein.⁴⁾ This binary test for S-gene target failure (SGTF) makes the implicit assumption that there is only ever one variant at a time that not be detected by comparisons of one or more S-gene sequences used.

• May, 2021 - S-Gene Target Failure as a Marker of Variant B.1.1.7 Among SARS-CoV-2 Isolates in the Greater Toronto Area, December 2020 to March 2021⁵⁾

• Los Alamos National Laboratory (July 8, 2017): COVID-19 Testing R&D Final Report