Aircraft Wastewater SARS-CoV-2 Variant Correlations with Passenger Testing, May 2022

Israel collected wastewater samples and matched clinical data from 86 international flights arriving from the UK and USA during May 2022. The data compares SARS-CoV-2 variant frequencies detected in aircraft wastewater to those from mandatory passenger testing, showing strong correlations. It was authored by Itay Bar-Or and shared under a CC-BY-4.0 license.

Use Cases

• Validate aircraft wastewater as a surveillance tool based on correlation metrics (r=0.84-0.86) mentioned in the description
• Analyze the relationship between viral load and genome coverage in wastewater samples as described
• Compare SARS-CoV-2 variant distributions (Omicron BA.2, BA.5, BA.4) between wastewater and clinical samples from travelers
• Assess surveillance sensitivity at low passenger infection prevalence (1.8%–3.4%) as reported

Strengths

• Data is based on 86 international flights with matched wastewater and clinical samples
• Strong statistical correlations (r=0.84-0.86) between wastewater and passenger variant distributions are reported
• SARS-CoV-2 RNA was detected in over 90% of wastewater samples despite low passenger infection rates

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment
• Data covers a specific one-month period (May 2022) and two origin countries

Provenance

Source

figshare

Collection Method

Wastewater and clinical data collected from flights arriving in Israel, processed with RT-qPCR and whole-genome sequencing.

Time Range

May 2022

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-28 05:28:27; freshness should be verified

Geography

Flights arriving in Israel from the United Kingdom and the United States