Influence of wastewater treatment technologies on virus removal under a bibliometric-statistical analysis

Viruses (e.g., SARS-CoV-2) are discharged into surface water bodies or agricultural irrigation from treated municipal/domestic wastewater. Therefore, this study aimed to evaluate the viral removal from wastewater treatment technologies, also considering wastewater physicochemical properties based on a bibliometric-statistical review. A preliminary bibliometric analysis (keywords co-occurrence) using VOS viewer (n = 698 scientific publications) was established. Moreover, systematic constraining criteria (1983–2021) limiting the statistical study to 93 scientific publications were carried out. Variance Analysis (ANOVA-2 ways) and Principal Component Analysis (PCA) were used to identify the most influential wastewater treatment typology and parameters affecting viral removal. Bibliometric results showed that at least 25% of the studies on viral removal from wastewater corresponded to the last 2 years. Therefore, SARS-CoV-2 was approached in a particular way. Thus, more than 15 viruses and/or genotypes and more than 20 specific/non-specific technologies for viral removal were statistically analyzed. Results did not report significant differences (p