The Mathematical Modeling Approach for the Wastewater Treatment Process in Saudi Arabia during COVID-19 Pandemic

The novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has had devastating effects on healthcare systems and the global economy. Moreover, coronavirus has been found in human feces, sewage, and in wastewater treatment plants. In this paper, we highlight the transmission behavior, occurrence, and persistence of the virus in sewage and wastewater treatment plants. Our approach follows the process of identifying a coronavirus hotspot through existing wastewater plants in major cities of Saudi Arabia. The mathematical distributions, including the log-normal distribution, Gaussian model, and susceptible-exposed-infected-recovered (SEIR) model, are adopted to predict the coronavirus load in wastewater plants. We highlight not only the potential virus removal techniques from wastewater treatment plants but also methods of tracing SARS-CoV-2 in humans through wastewater treatment plants. The results indicate that our modeling approach may facilitate the analysis of SARS-CoV-2 loads in wastewater for early prediction of the epidemic outbreak and provide significant implications to the public health system.