Related Articles Sewage surveillance for the presence of SARS CoV 2 genome as a useful wastewater based epidemiology WBE tracking tool in India Water Sci Technol 2020 Dec 82 12 2823 2836 Authors Arora S Nag A Sethi J Rajvanshi J Saxena S Shrivastava SK Gupta AB Abstract The infection with SARS CoV 2 is reported to be accompanied by the shedding of the virus in fecal samples of infected patients Earlier reports have suggested that COVID 19 agents can be present in the sewage samples and thus it can be a good indication of the pandemic extent in a community However no such studies have been reported in the Indian context Hence it becomes absolutely necessary to detect the presence of the SARS CoV 2 in the wastewater samples from wastewater treatment plants WWTPs serving different localities of Jaipur city Samples from different WWTPs and hospital wastewater samples were collected and wastewater based epidemiology WBE studies were carried out using the RT PCR to confirm the presence of different COVID 19 target genes namely S gene E gene ORF1ab gene RdRp gene and N gene The results revealed that the untreated wastewater samples showed the presence of SARS CoV 2 viral genome which was correlated with the increased number of COVID 19 positive patients from the concerned areas as reported in the publically available health data This is the first study that investigated the presence of SARS CoV 2 viral genome in wastewater at higher ambient temperature 45 C further validating WBE as potential tool in predicting and mitigating outbreaks PMID 33341773 PubMed as supplied by publisher