Concerns and strategies for wastewater treatment during COVID-19 pandemic to stop plausible transmission

Along with outbreak of the pandemic COVID-19 caused by SARS-CoV-2, the problem of biomedical wastewater disposal has caused widespread public concern, as reportedly the presence is confirmed in wastewater. Keeping in mind (i) available evidence indicating need to better understand potential of wastewater mediated transmission and (ii) knowledge gaps in its occurrence, viability, persistence, and inactivation in wastewater, in this present work, we wanted to re-emphasize some strategies for management of SARS-CoV-2 contaminated wastewater to minimise any possible secondary transmission to human and environment. The immediate challenges to consider while considering wastewater management are uncertainty about this new biothreat, relying on prediction based treatments options, significant population being the latent asymptomatic carrier increased risk of passing out of the virus to sewage network, inadequacy of wastewater treatment facility particularly in populated developing countries and increased generation of wastewater due to increased cleanliness concern. In absence of regulated central treatment facility, installation of decentralized wastewater treatment units with single or multiple disinfection barriers in medical units, quarantine centre, isolation wards, testing facilities seems to be urgent for minimizing any potential risk of wastewater transmission. Employing some emerging disinfectants (peracetic acid, performic acid, sodium dichloro isocyanurate, chloramines, chlorine dioxide, benzalconium chloride) shows prospects in terms of virucidal properties. However, there is need of additional research on coronaviruses specific disinfection data generation, regular monitoring of performance considering all factors influencing virus survival, performance evaluation in actual water treatment, need of augmenting disinfection dosages, environmental considerations to select the most appropriate disinfection technology.