  The pandemic of COVID-19 has imposed tremendous pressure on public health
systems and social economic ecosystems over the past years. To alleviate its
social impact, it is important to proactively track the prevalence of COVID-19
within communities. The traditional way to estimate the disease prevalence is
to estimate from reported clinical test data or surveys. However, the coverage
of clinical tests is often limited and the tests can be labor-intensive,
requires reliable and timely results, and consistent diagnostic and reporting
criteria. Recent studies revealed that patients who are diagnosed with COVID-19
often undergo fecal shedding of SARS-CoV-2 virus into wastewater, which makes
wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) for COVID-19 surveillance a promising
approach to complement traditional clinical testing. In this paper, we survey
the existing literature regarding WBE for COVID-19 surveillance and summarize
the current advances in the area. Specifically, we have covered the key aspects
of wastewater sampling, sample testing, and presented a comprehensive and
organized summary of wastewater data analytical methods. Finally, we provide
the open challenges on current wastewater-based COVID-19 surveillance studies,
aiming to encourage new ideas to advance the development of effective
wastewater-based surveillance systems for general infectious diseases.
