Conference Agenda

The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated the critical role of Wastewater-Based Epidemiology in monitoring infectious disease at population level. This work presents a comparative analysis of WBE data from Austria and the USA, focusing on temporal and spatial features in the data and highlight key aspects. Data dispersion and variability attributes, as well as general wave development are displayed and analyzed. Methodological differences between Austria and the USA are highlighted, concerning population size referencing with biomarkers and public health monitoring strategies. With clinical case and hospitalization reporting largely discontinued in early 2024, WBE has emerged as a critical tool for monitoring the epidemic's dynamics. Viral RNA concentrations in wastewater provide insights into temporal patterns and their relationship to hospitalization admissions. Cross-correlation analyses reveal that wastewater viral RNA peaks consistently precede hospitalization admissions by 2 to 12 days, highlighting the effectiveness of WBE in providing early signals. Data variability is shown to be significantly influenced by the size of the monitored wastewater treatment plant. Smaller plants exhibited higher variability in viral RNA concentrations as compared to larger plants. By stratifying the data into five groups based on plant size, a clear trend of decreasing variability with increasing plant size was observed.