{"doi":"10.3390/pathogens10070798","title":"Occurrence of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in Six Municipal Wastewater Treatment Plants at the Early Stage of COVID-19 Pandemic in The United States","abstract":"In this study, we investigated the occurrence of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) RNA in primary influent (n = 42), secondary effluent (n = 24) and tertiary treated effluent (n = 34) collected from six wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs A–F) in Virginia (WWTP A), Florida (WWTPs B, C, and D), and Georgia (WWTPs E and F) in the United States during April–July 2020. Of the 100 wastewater samples analyzed, eight (19%) untreated wastewater samples collected from the primary influents contained SARS-CoV-2 RNA as measured by reverse transcriptase quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) assays. SARS-CoV-2 RNA were detected in influent wastewater samples collected from WWTP A (Virginia), WWTPs E and F (Georgia) and WWTP D (Florida). Secondary and tertiary effluent samples were not positive for SARS-CoV-2 RNA indicating the treatment processes in these WWTPs potentially removed SARS-CoV-2 RNA during the secondary and tertiary treatment processes. However, further studies are needed to understand the log removal values (LRVs) and transmission risks of SARS-CoV-2 RNA through analyzing wastewater samples from a wider range of WWTPs.","journal":"Pathogens","year":2021,"id":167960,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":31,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9298,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2021-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":697222,"name":"Shalina Shahin","orcid":null,"position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":697223,"name":"Jeenal Patel","orcid":null,"position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":696380,"name":"Lauren Ward","orcid":"0000-0002-4095-9342","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":696381,"name":"Sarmila Tandukar","orcid":"0000-0002-9845-6385","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":696382,"name":"Sital Uprety","orcid":"0000-0001-9080-1749","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":697224,"name":"Bradley W. Schmitz","orcid":null,"position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":278069,"name":"Warish Ahmed","orcid":"0000-0002-1351-8963","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":278074,"name":"Stuart L. Simpson","orcid":"0000-0003-1759-0564","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":278073,"name":"Pradip Gyawali","orcid":"0000-0002-0812-7191","position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":696379,"name":"Samendra P. Sherchan","orcid":"0000-0002-0092-7928","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":35,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:46:02.603031Z","pmid":"34201687","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}