Abstract
Estimates of viral content can be used as an indicator of the community infection rate, and as an indicator of resurgence of COVID-19 in well-defined sites such as production facilities, hospitals, nursing homes and wastewater treatment plants. The Eurofins Covid-19 Sentinel™ program was developed to monitor the evolution of the Covid-19 pandemic, and for early detection of corona disease outbreaks in local communities. This paper provides an extension of the Eurofins Sentinel program, and demonstrates further protocol optimization, method validation and real life application. The validation of the Eurofins Covid-19 Sentinel™ protocol include analysis of optimal storage conditions, sample stability, estimates of reproducibility, sensitivity, precision, and precision in viral recovery upon dilution of wastewater samples. The Eurofins Covid-19 Sentinel™ wastewater method was later implemented in the national wastewater surveillance program in Denmark, as it provides a robust, sensitive and semi-quantitative method to monitor the spread and occurrence of SARS-CoV-2 virus within local populations.