As new variants emerge of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the pathogen causing the current coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, continue to circulate, early identification and sequencing have become a necessary part of research in this area. This virus is known to be shed from the nose, the lungs, the saliva, urine, and feces.
A new study, published on the medRxiv* preprint server, reports the use of metagenomics to detect the virus from wastewater samples, indicating community-level circulating variants that are not yet identified or are present in very low proportions on clinical databases.