Environmental surveillance of UK wastewater detected an upsurge of Enterovirus D68 between July and November 2021, revealing co-circulation of genetic clade D and sub-clade B3.
Observational
Environmental surveillance of wastewater using next-generation sequencing is a valuable tool for the early detection and tracking of circulating human viruses such as EV-D68.
Infection with enterovirus D68 (EV-D68) has been linked with severe neurological disease such as acute flaccid myelitis (AFM) in recent years. However, active surveillance for EV-D68 is lacking, which makes full assessment of this association difficult. Although a high number of EV-D68 infections were expected in 2020 based on the EV-D68's known biannual circulation patterns, no apparent increase in EV-D68 detections or AFM cases was observed during 2020. We describe an upsurge of EV-D68 detections in wastewater samples from the United Kingdom between July and November 2021 mirroring the recently reported rise in EV-D68 detections in clinical samples from various European countries. We provide the first publicly available 2021 EV-D68 sequences showing co-circulation of EV-D68 strains from genetic clade D and sub-clade B3 as in previous years. Our results show the value of environmental surveillance (ES) for the early detection of circulating and clinically relevant human viruses. The use of a next-generation sequencing (NGS) approach helped us to estimate the prevalence of EV-D68 viruses among EV strains from other EV serotypes and to detect EV-D68 minor variants. The utility of ES at reducing gaps in virus surveillance for EV-D68 and the possible impact of nonpharmaceutical interventions introduced to control the COVID-19 pandemic on EV-D68 transmission dynamics are discussed.
Tedcastle et al. (Thu,) conducted a observational in Enterovirus D68 (EV-D68). Environmental surveillance using next-generation sequencing was evaluated on Detection of EV-D68 and genetic clades in wastewater. Environmental surveillance of UK wastewater detected an upsurge of Enterovirus D68 between July and November 2021, revealing co-circulation of genetic clade D and sub-clade B3.