Correlations between Wastewater Concentrations of Influenza A and Respiratory Syncytial Viruses and Clinical...

We evaluated correlations between influenza A virus and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) wastewater concentrations in California, USA, and 3 clinical laboratory-based disease surveillance datasets: sentinel laboratory surveillance, mandatory electronic laboratory reporting data, and laboratory-confirmed influenza hospitalizations. We evaluated data from 10 counties and 18 wastewater treatment plants in California during July 2022-March 2024. We observed strong, positive, and statistically significant correlations between individual sewershed-level wastewater concentrations and county-aggregated wastewater concentrations of influenza A and RSV and clinical laboratory-based surveillance datasets (median Kendall τ 0.62 [range 0.40-0.78]; p<0.05). A lead-lag analysis did not show consistent evidence of wastewater leading other surveillance datasets across all counties and wastewater treatment plants (influenza A -16 to 22 days; RSV -8 to 35 days). Wastewater surveillance can augment other disease surveillance modalities and improve situational awareness of influenza A and RSV transmission in communities.