Wastewater sequencing reveals early cryptic SARS-CoV-2 variant transmission

As SARS-CoV-2 continues to spread and evolve,detecting emerging variants early is critical for public health interventions.Inferring lineage prevalence by clinical testing is infeasible at scale,especially in areas with limited resources,participation,or testing/sequencing capacity,which can also introduce biases1-3.SARS-CoV-2 RNA concentration in wastewater successfully tracks regional infection dynamics and provides less biased abundance estimates than clinical testing4,5.Tracking virus genomic sequences in wastewater would improve community prevalence estimates and detect emerging variants.