Community-led standards for global wastewater-based infectious disease surveillance

Area of Science:

• Public Health
• Environmental Science
• Genomic Epidemiology

Background:

• The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the use of wastewater and environmental surveillance (WES) for public health.
• Existing practical, scientific, ethical, and legal standards for WES implementation are limited.
• There is a need for standardized, accessible guidance for effective WES.

Purpose of the Study:

• To address the lack of standardized WES guidelines.
• To develop community-driven, open guidance on WES methods and best practices.
• To promote transparent, reproducible, and accessible WES implementation worldwide.

Main Methods:

• Established a multidisciplinary international working group under the Public Health Alliance for Genomic Epidemiology (PHA4GE).
• Integrated expertise from public health researchers, practitioners, bioethicists, and legal scholars.
• Incorporated feedback from the broader public health community to develop guidance.

Main Results:

• Developed a continuously updated framework for WES.
• The framework covers surveillance strategies, data analysis, data sharing, and ethical-legal considerations.
• Guidance aligns with global public health authorities and is adaptable to diverse contexts.

Conclusions:

• The developed WES guidance framework aims to standardize and improve global public health surveillance.
• The open-access guidance promotes transparency, reproducibility, and accessibility in WES.
• This initiative supports the effective use of WES as a complement to traditional disease monitoring.