The pandemic of COVID-19 has imposed tremendous pressure on public health systems and social economic ecosystems over the past years. To alleviate its social impact, it is important to proactively track the prevalence of COVID-19 within communities. The traditional way to estimate the disease prevalence is to estimate from reported clinical test data or surveys. However, the coverage of clinical tests is often limited and the tests can be labor-intensive, requires reliable and timely results, and consistent diagnostic and reporting criteria. Recent studies revealed that patients who are diagnosed with COVID-19 often undergo fecal shedding of SARS-CoV-2 virus into wastewater, which makes wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) for COVID-19 surveillance a promising approach to complement traditional clinical testing. In this paper, we survey the existing literature regarding WBE for COVID-19 surveillance and summarize the current advances in the area. Specifically, we have covered the key aspects of wastewater sampling, sample testing, and presented a comprehensive and organized summary of wastewater data analytical methods. Finally, we provide the open challenges on current wastewater-based COVID-19 surveillance studies, aiming to encourage new ideas to advance the development of effective wastewater-based surveillance systems for general infectious diseases.

翻译：过去几年，COVID-19大流行给公共卫生系统和社会经济生态系统带来了巨大压力。为减轻其社会影响，主动追踪社区内COVID-19的流行程度至关重要。传统估算疾病流行率的方法依赖于报告临床检测数据或调查数据。然而，临床检测的覆盖范围往往有限，且检测过程劳动密集，需要可靠及时的结果以及统一的诊断和报告标准。近期研究表明，确诊COVID-19的患者常通过粪便向废水中排泄SARS-CoV-2病毒，这使得基于废水流行病学（WBE）的COVID-19监测有望成为传统临床检测的补充手段。本文对现有关于WBE用于COVID-19监测的文献进行了系统综述，总结了该领域的最新进展。具体而言，我们涵盖了废水采样、样本检测等关键环节，并全面系统地归纳了废水数据分析方法。最后，我们提出了当前基于废水的COVID-19监测研究面临的开放性挑战，旨在激发新思路，推动针对一般传染病的有效废水监测系统的发展。