A review of the presence of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in wastewater and airborne particulates and its use for virus spreading surveillance

According to the WHO, on October 16 2020, the spreading of the SARS-CoV-2, responsible of the COVID-19 pandemic, achieved 235 countries and territories, resulting in more than 39 million confirmed cases and 1.09 million deaths globally. Monitoring of virus outbreak is one of the main activities pursued for limiting the number of infected peoples and decreasing the number of deaths and of patients recovered that causes high pressure on the health care, social and economic systems of different countries. Wastewater based epidemiology (WBE), already adopted for the surveillance of life style and health conditions of communities, shows interesting features for being used also for the monitoring of the COVID-19 diffusion. Together with wastewater, the analysis of airborne particles has been recently suggested as another useful tool for detecting the presence of SARS-CoV-2 in given areas. The present review reports about the status of the art and of the research currently performed concerning the monitoring of SARS-CoV-2 spreading by WBE and airborne particles. The former resulted more investigated, whereas the latter resulted in a very early stage with a limited number of very recent studies. In any case, the main results highlight in both cases the necessity of more research activity for better understating and defining the biomarkers and the related sampling and analysis procedures to be used for this important aim.