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The DOI matches its Crossref record; 41 of the 41 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

First environmental surveillance for the presence of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in wastewater and river water in Japan

Open access
Haramoto, Eiji, Malla, Bikash, Thakali, Ocean, Kitajima, Masaaki·2020·Science of The Total Environment

Abstract

ABSTRACT Wastewater-based epidemiology is a powerful tool to understand the actual incidence of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) in a community because severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the etiological agent of COVID-19, can be shed in the feces of infected individuals regardless of their symptoms. The present study aimed to assess the presence of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in wastewater and river water in Yamanashi Prefecture, Japan, using four quantitative and two nested PCR assays. Influent and secondary-treated (before chlorination) wastewater samples and river water samples were collected five times from a wastewater treatment plant and three times from a river, respectively, between March 17 and May 7, 2020. The wastewater and river water samples (200–5,000 mL) were processed by using two different methods: the electronegative membrane-vortex (EMV) method and the membrane adsorption-direct RNA extraction method. Based on the observed concentrations of indigenous pepper mild mottle virus RNA, the EMV method was found superior to the membrane adsorption-direct RNA extraction method. SARS-CoV-2 RNA was successfully detected in one of five secondary-treated wastewater samples with a concentration of 2.4 × 10 3 copies/L by N_Sarbeco qPCR assay following the EMV method, whereas all the influent samples were tested negative for SARS-CoV-2 RNA. This result could be attributed to higher limit of detection for influent (4.0 × 10 3 –8.2 × 10 4 copies/L) with a lower filtration volume (200 mL) compared to that for secondary-treated wastewater (1.4 × 10 2 –2.5 × 10 3 copies/L) with a higher filtration volume of 5,000 mL. None of the river water samples tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 RNA. Comparison with the reported COVID-19 cases in Yamanashi Prefecture showed that SARS-CoV-2 RNA was detected in the secondary-treated wastewater sample when the cases peaked in the community. This is the first study reporting the detection of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in wastewater in Japan.

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Metadata

Authors
Haramoto, E., Malla, B., Thakali, O., & Kitajima, M.
Venue
Science of The Total Environment
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Published
2020-10
Volume
737
Pages
140405
ISSN
0048-9697 (ISSN-L)
OpenAlex
W3036431624
Cited by
593
References
41
FWCI
14.37
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
hybrid

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: First environmental surveillance for the presence of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in wastewater and river water in Japan. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.140405
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Haramoto, E., Malla, B., Thakali, O., & Kitajima, M. (2020). First environmental surveillance for the presence of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in wastewater and river water in Japan. Science of The Total Environment. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.140405

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