How do you estimate COVID-19 cases?
Our latest COVID-19 incidence estimation model is built from Biobot’s dataset, the largest COVID-19 wastewater dataset in the world to date. We mined this dataset to derive an empirical relationship between the amount of virus in sewage samples and the number of cases reported in the associated communities over the next 7 days. This means that our model provides an estimate of the number of cases that will be reported in your community in the next week.
How do you derive the shedding parameter?
We directly model the relationship between viral loads in sewage and reported cases using our dataset on SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater rather than relying on published clinical studies reporting clinical viral shedding in stool. More specifically, we correlate the total virus load in each wastewater sample with the number of reported COVID-19 cases in the respective communities for 7 days following the date of sample collection. This empirical relationship allows us to determine the parameter linking a given amount of SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater with associated reported cases in the community.
What factors affect your calculation for COVID-19 cases? What information do you need from customers to improve your case estimates?
The factors affecting our estimate of COVID-19 cases are the virus concentration, the flow rate on your sampling date, and viral shedding per reported case. The most important information you can provide is the daily flow on the day of sampling. The more accurate this number is, the better our estimates will be.