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Updated: Jun 26, 2026
Swabbing the Urban Environment - A Pipeline for Sampling and Detection of SARS-CoV-2 From Environmental Reservoirs
Published on: April 9, 2021
Detection and quantification of infectious severe acute respiratory coronavirus-2 in diverse clinical and
Yi-Chan Lin1, Rebecca J Malott2, Linda Ward2,3
1Department of Medical Microbiology and Immunology, University of Alberta, 6-142L Katz Group Centre, Edmonton, AB, T6G 2J7, Canada.
Abstract:
To explore the potential modes of Severe Acute Respiratory Coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) transmission, we collected 535 diverse clinical and environmental samples from 75 infected hospitalized and community patients. Infectious SARS-CoV-2 with quantitative burdens varying from 5 plaque-forming units/mL (PFU/mL) up to 1.0 × 106 PFU/mL was detected in 151/459 (33%) of the specimens assayed and up to 1.3 × 106 PFU/mL on fomites with confirmation by plaque morphology, PCR, immunohistochemistry, and/or sequencing. Infectious virus in clinical and associated environmental samples correlated with time since symptom onset with no detection after 7-8 days in immunocompetent hosts and with N-gene based Ct values ≤ 25 significantly predictive of yielding plaques in culture. SARS-CoV-2 isolated from patient respiratory tract samples caused illness in a hamster model with a minimum infectious dose of ≤ 14 PFU. Together, our findings offer compelling evidence that large respiratory droplet and contact (direct and indirect i.e., fomites) are important modes of SARS-CoV-2 transmission.
