A0882
Title: Generalized profiling for wastewater-based epidemiology
Authors: Wouter Hetebrij - Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (Netherlands) [presenting]
Michiel van Boven - Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (Netherlands)
Deb Panja - Utrecht University (Netherlands)
Matthijs Romeijnders - Utrecht University (Netherlands)
Lotte Weedage - Eindhoven University of Technology (Netherlands)
Abstract: Wastewater-based epidemiology has been used globally during the COVID-19 pandemic to track the spread of SARS-CoV-2 based on viral loads in wastewater. This was done by either modeling the trend of the wastewater measurements separately and comparing this with the other epidemiological indicators or by including the wastewater data as a separate compartment in an epidemiological model. The aim is to combine both approaches in wastewater-based epidemiology using the generalized profiling framework, with a focus on the early phase of a pandemic. At the start of a pandemic, existing infrastructure for wastewater surveillance can be used to provide real-time information about the trajectory of the pandemic. However, forecasting the trajectory based on only the wastewater trend might be difficult as the underlying epidemiological process is not taken into account. On the other hand, if there is only limited information about the pathogen characteristics available, forecasting the model based purely on a compartmental epidemiological model would also be difficult. By combining both approaches in the generalized profiling framework, the aim is to provide better, short-term predictions of the trajectory of the pandemic.
