Identification of SARS-CoV-2 variants in indoor dust

Copyright: © 2024 Van Dusen et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited..

Environmental surveillance of pathogens underlying infectious disease is critical to ensure public health. Recent efforts to track SARS-CoV-2 have utilized wastewater sampling to infer community trends in viral abundance and variant composition. Indoor dust has also been used for building-level inferences, though to date no sequencing data providing variant-scale resolution have been reported from dust samples, and strategies to monitor circulating variants in dust are needed to help inform public health decisions. In this study, we demonstrate that SARS-CoV-2 lineages can be detected and sequenced from indoor bulk dust samples. We collected 93 vacuum bags from April 2021 to March 2022 from buildings on The Ohio State University's (OSU) Columbus campus, and the dust was used to develop and apply an amplicon-based whole-genome sequencing protocol to identify the variants present and estimate their relative abundances. Three variants of concern were detected in the dust: Alpha, Delta, and Omicron. Alpha was found in our earliest sample in April 2021 with an estimated frequency of 100%. Delta was the primary variant present from October of 2021 to January 2022, with an average estimated frequency of 91% (±1.3%). Omicron became the primary variant in January 2022 and was the dominant strain in circulation through March with an estimated frequency of 87% (±3.2%). The detection of these variants on OSU's campus correlates with the circulation of these variants in the surrounding population (Delta p<0.0001 and Omicron p = 0.02). Overall, these results support the hypothesis that dust can be used to track COVID-19 variants in buildings.

Media Type:

Electronic Article

Year of Publication:

2024

Publication:

2024

Contained In:

To Main Record - volume:19

Contained In:

PloS one - 19(2024), 2 vom: 09., Seite e0297172

Language:

English

Contributors:

Van Dusen, John [Author]
LeBlanc, Haley [Author]
Nastasi, Nicholas [Author]
Panescu, Jenny [Author]
Shamblin, Austin [Author]
Smith, Jacob W [Author]
Sovic, Michael G [Author]
Williams, Amanda [Author]
Quam, Mikkel B M [Author]
Faith, Seth [Author]
Dannemiller, Karen C [Author]

Links:

Volltext

Keywords:

Dust
Journal Article

Notes:

Date Completed 14.02.2024

Date Revised 14.02.2024

published: Electronic-eCollection

Citation Status MEDLINE

doi:

10.1371/journal.pone.0297172

Clinical Trials/ Publications:


Study related publications :

funding:

Supporting institution / Project title:

PPN (Catalogue-ID):

NLM368246981