What do we know about the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus in the environment?

1 What do we know about the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus in the environment? 1 2 Avelino Núñez-Delgado 3 Dept. Soil Science and Agricultural Chemistry, Engineering Polytechnic School, 4 campus univ. Lugo, University Santiago de Compostela, Spain 5 Email address: [email protected] 6 7 Conflict of interest: none 8 9 Abstract 10 In view of the current situation regarding the Covid-19 disease, a discussion is proposed 11 on the need for research focusing on the presence and evolution of the SARS-CoV-2 12 virus in water, soils and other environmental compartments, reached through 13 wastewater and sewage sludge spreading. Also, the evaluation of current treatments for 14 wastewater and sewage sludge, as well as the eventual development of new specific 15 techniques, based on sorption, nanotechnology, etc., would be of great interest for 16 controlling the environmental dissemination of these viruses in the current and eventual 17 future outbreaks. 18 19 Keywords: Covid-19; sewage sludge; soil; viruses; water; wastewater 20 21 Discussion 22 With thousands of people already affected by the Covid19 disease in various countries 23 around the world, and millions of people controlled regarding displacements in their 24 2 own countries and/or local geographic areas, it is time to add some comments on related 25 aspects, applicable now and in the coming future. 26 In fact, it should be taken into account that symptomatic (and maybe also 27 asymptomatic) affected people could spread the viruses through their excreta, which 28 would make appropriate to think on (and evaluate) effectiveness and consequences of 29 related wastewater and sewage sludge treatment and eventual subsequent spreading to 30 environmental compartments. Bowser (2020) has recently reported on the presence of 31 this virus in feces from humans. Also, Pan et al. (2020) published some of the first 32 results in this regard. 33 If this virus is not eradicated, we should think on further screening focusing on 34 wastewater (Martínez-Puchol et al. -2020have recently published a paper dealing with 35 related aspects), but also on sewage sludge (as shown by Nag et al. -2020evaluating 36 survival of bacteria and viruses causing different diseases, as well as in previous papers, 37 such as that by Zhao and Liu -2019), soils and sediments (Katz et al., 2018; Nag et al., 38 2020; Zhao and Liu, 2019), crops (Ahmed et al., 2019; Nag et al., 2020; Zhao and Liu, 39 2019), animals (Pruvot et al., 2019), surface and ground-waters (Corsi et al., 2014; 40 Givens et al., 2016). Further research should also focus on eventual technical 41 treatments, including biosorbents and other materials to retain and/or inactive this and 42 other pathogens circulating in these environmental compartments, before and after 43 going out from wastewater treatment plants (in case of these treatment systems existing, 44 as it could be worse, with spreading of untreated wastes). Some previous papers (such 45 as those by Auffret et al., 2019; Hlongwane et al., 2019) could be considered as 46 reference to program future studies. Also, the “sewage epidemiology approach” could 47 be very useful, as this monitoring concept went from an initial focus on illicit drugs 48 (van Nuijs et al., 2011) to the current view (also called “wastewater-based 49 3 epidemiology”), covering a broad array of substances in wastewater, including virus 50 particles (Daughton, 2020; Sims and Kasprzyk-Hordern, 2020), and it would allow a 51 drastic reduction in the time needed to develop a wastewater monitoring approach 52 specifically designed for SARS-CoV-2 (Daughton, 2020). 53 When spread in the environment, some potential steps to be considered for these viruses 54 are transfer from one compartment to another, entering living beings (multicellular, but 55 maybe also unicellular in the future), proliferation, eventual mutation, transmission, … 56 Currently, it is thought that these coronaviruses can survive for just few days in the 57 environment, out of living cells (Kampf et al., 2020), but it could be enough time to 58 reach other organisms, to mutate and change characteristics, etc. Multiple possible 59 scenarios should be considered for the coming future. 60 These eventual considerations for the close future would be taken into account as soon 61 as possible, in addition to the already in vigor measures implemented to control direct 62 spreading by the air. 63 64 References 65 Ahmed, W., Hamilton, K., Toze, S., Cook, S., Page, D. 2019. 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