WSEC-2020-TR-002 May 12, 2020 Coronavirus and Water Systems An update and expansion on “The Water Professional’s Guide to COVID-19” Rasha Maal-Bared, Naoko Munakata, Kyle Bibby, Kari Brisolara, Charles Gerba, Mark Sobsey, Scott Schaefer, Jay Swift, Lee Gary, Samendra Sherchan, Akin Babatola, Lola Olabode, Robert Reimers, Robert Bastian, and Albert Rubin Preamble On February 19, 2020, WEF published The Water Professional’s Guide to COVID-19. The Guide was meant to increase water sector awareness of COVID-19 virus and any water and wastewater-related issues and relevant resources. The content was reprinted in the April 2020 issue of Water Environment & Technology. Since then, the World Health Organization (WHO) has declared COVID-19 a pandemic and the disease has spread to more than 210 countries with more research on the virus being published every day. In an effort to keep the water community informed of COVID-19 developments, the Waterborne Infectious Disease Outbreak Control (WIDOC) working group has prepared an update to highlight the latest scientific findings, as well as topics not previously addressed. The goal is to contextualize these new results and state the implications and significance from a water and wastewater collection and treatment, public health and water resource recovery facility (WRRF) worker perspective. Primary Messages The research community has yet to find evidence of survival of infective COVID-19 virus in feces and in wastewater systems. Efforts are ongoing to assess the relative risk of exposure to wastewater. Current efforts estimate numbers of infections in the community and support public health surveillance by detecting the virus in wastewater using molecular techniques that identify presence and quantities of genetic material (RNA). This method does not assess virus viability or infectivity. Future research on COVID-19 virus is encouraged to investigate concentrations of infective virus in feces (if any), shedding patterns in patients and factors influencing persistence of infective virus in plumbing and collection systems. Research is ongoing, but experts currently believe that exposure to wastewater is not a significant transmission route for COVID-19 virus. WEF continues to work on improving protection of wastewater workers from pathogen exposure — especially via aerosols — by forming a Blue Ribbon Panel to address the issue of required personal protective equipment, as well as protective work and hygiene practices.