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

May 2022 data from 86 international flights arriving in Israel compares SARS-CoV-2 variant distributions from aircraft wastewater to those from mandatory passenger clinical tests. The dataset, created by Itay Bar-Or and shared under CC-BY-4.0, shows strong correlations (r=0.84-0.86) between wastewater and clinical sample variant profiles. It includes results from flights originating in the UK and USA, with SARS-CoV-2 RNA detected in over 90% of wastewater samples.

Use Cases

• Validate aircraft wastewater as a surveillance tool based on correlation metrics with passenger testing.
• Analyze variant frequency distributions (Omicron BA.2, BA.5, BA.4) across different flight origins.
• Study the relationship between viral load and genome coverage in wastewater samples.
• Assess surveillance sensitivity at low passenger infection prevalence (1.8%–3.4%).

Strengths

• Includes data from 86 international flights with matched wastewater and clinical samples.
• Reports strong statistical correlations (r=0.84 and r=0.86) between surveillance methods.
• SARS-CoV-2 RNA was detected in over 90% of aircraft wastewater samples.
• Specific temporal coverage (May 2022) and geographic origins (UK and USA flights to Israel) are provided.

Limitations

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

Provenance

Source

Itay Bar-Or via figshare

Collection Method

Wastewater samples and matched clinical data collected from flights, processed with RT-qPCR and whole-genome sequencing, followed by bioinformatic and statistical analysis.

Time Range

May 2022

Freshness

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

Geography

International flights from the UK and USA arriving in Israel.