WBE: An Integral Part of Mass Surveillance of COVID-19?

The recent ongoing pandemic, COVID-19, has caused severe loss to lives as well as socio-economic status of the world. The science of sewage surveillance is a continuously evolving methodology that needs to be explored more globally. Sewage or fecal contamination in wastewater could serve as a vector for many pathogenic viruses (enveloped or non-enveloped) and might be attributed as fecal–oral transmission route for human populations. Wastewater surveillance for COVID-19 could show enormous potential at population level. It could prove instrumental for detection and safeguarding any outbreak prior to its uncontrolled transmission. Wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) might serve as an ice breaking strategy to track the changing trends of the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak and transmission. It offers real-time tracing of the metabolites/parent drugs/viral components in the sewershed thereby keeping a check on the present or future pandemic(s) before they change allowing necessary law implementation. In concert with contact tracing and clinical surveillance, WBE could provide critical knowledge about transmission dynamics of the pandemic or future outbreaks.