Persistence of sewage-borne enteroviruses through chlorination treatment

Enteroviruses are a leading cause in a diversity of severe human diseases worldwide and the presence of these viruses in recreational water can present a risk for human health. Viruses' capacity to persist in the outside environment is limited but some viruses may stay infectious long enough to cause diseases if ingested in drinking or recreational water. There is growing interest in understanding mechanisms making viruses more resistant and measuring the persistence of enteroviruses in wastewater treatments. Disinfection sensitivity of enteroviruses is known to differ between similar serotypes, however, the extent of this variation has not been quantified so far. However, measuring the concentration of infective viruses in a mixed sample is not trivial and require deep analytical techniques. Thus, the objective of the study is to develop a method to measure efficiently infectious concentration of enteroviruses from mixed samples and to evaluate the specific response of enterovirus serotypes to chlorination. The research work involved two distinct parts: Firstly, the priority was to develop a method to detect and assess the infectious concentration of viruses at the serotype level. Secondly, experiments using free-chlorine were performed to determine the differences in inactivation between serotypes to chlorination.