Lakshmi Pisharody

• PhD Student at Indian Institute of Technology Bombay

The emergence of COVID-19 in Canada has led to over 4.9 million cases and 59,000 deaths by May 2024. Traditional clinical surveillance metrics (hospital admissions and clinical laboratory-positive cases) were complemented with wastewater and environmental monitoring (WEM) to monitor SARS-CoV-2 incidence. However, challenges in public health integra...

The recent global resurgence of measles in 2023–2024, despite vaccine preventability, underscores a critical public health issue, largely due to reduced vaccination coverage during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. In response, Ottawa Public Health intensified vaccination efforts in 2023 and 2024. Additionally, a research initiative began in April 2024 to m...

Background Clinical genomic surveillance is the gold standard for monitoring SARS-CoV-2 variants globally, but as the pandemic wanes, reduced testing increases the risk of missing the emergence of variants of concern or failing to accurately follow their trajectory in populations. Wastewater-based genomic surveillance (WWS) that estimates variant f...

Clinical genomic surveillance is regarded as the gold standard for monitoring SARS-CoV-2 variants globally. However, as the pandemic wanes, reduced testing poses a risk to effectively tracking the trajectory of these variants within populations. Wastewater-based genomic surveillance that estimates variant frequency based on its defining set of alle...

The recent global resurgence of measles in 2023-2024, despite its preventability through vaccination, is a significant public health concern largely driven by decreased vaccination coverage during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. To address this resurgence and to restore vaccine coverage disrupted by the pandemic, Ottawa Public Health intensified vaccinati...

This study presents a comprehensive analysis of the decay patterns of endogenous SARS-CoV-2 and Pepper mild mottle virus (PMMoV) within wastewaters spiked with stool from infected patients expressing COVID-19 symptoms, and hence explores the decay of endogenous SARS-CoV-2 and PMMoV targets in wastewaters from source to collection of the sample. Sto...

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Province of Ontario, Canada, launched a wastewater surveillance program to monitor SARS-CoV-2, inspired by the early work and successful forecasts of COVID-19 waves in the city of Ottawa, Ontario. This manuscript presents a dataset from January 1, 2021, to March 31, 2023, with RT-qPCR results for SARS-CoV-2 genes a...

Rampant pathogenesis induced by communicable microbes has necessitated development of technologies for rapid and sustained disinfection of surfaces. Copper nanoparticles (CuNPs) have been widely reported for their antimicrobial properties. However, nanostructured copper is prone to oxidative dissolution in the oil phase limiting its sustained use o...

Wastewater surveillance of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) commonly applies reverse transcription-quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) to quantify severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) RNA concentrations in wastewater over time. In most applications worldwide, maximal sensitivity and specificity of RT-qPCR has...

Wastewater surveillance (WWS) of SARS-CoV-2 has become a crucial tool for monitoring COVID-19 cases and outbreaks. Previous studies have indicated that SARS-CoV-2 RNA measurement from testing solid-rich primary sludge yields better sensitivity compared to testing wastewater influent. Furthermore, measurement of pepper mild mottle virus (PMMoV) sign...

Introduction Detection of community respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) infections informs the timing of immunoprophylaxis programs and hospital preparedness for surging pediatric volumes. In many jurisdictions, this relies upon RSV clinical test positivity and hospitalization (RSVH) trends, which are lagging indicators. Wastewater-based surveillance...

Recent MPOX viral resurgences have mobilized public health agencies around the world. Recognizing the significant risk of MPOX outbreaks, large-scale human testing, and immunization campaigns have been initiated by local, national, and global public health authorities. Recently, traditional clinical surveillance campaigns for MPOX have been complem...

Wastewater surveillance (WWS) has received interest from researchers, scientists, and public health units for its application in monitoring active COVID-19 cases and detecting outbreaks. While WWS of SARS-CoV-2 has been widely applied worldwide, a knowledge gap exists concerning the effects of enhanced primary clarification, the application of coag...

Laser-induced graphene (LIG) is a method of generating a foam-like conformal carbon layer of porous graphene on many types of carbon-based surfaces. This electrically conductive material has been shown to be useful in many applications including environmental technology and includes low fouling and antimicrobial surfaces and can address persistent...

Biofouling is an ongoing challenge for water treatment membrane processes. Reducing biofilm growth on the membrane surface or on the polymeric feed spacer will reduce operation, maintenance, and module replacement costs. Laser‐induced graphene (LIG) is a low cost, environmentally friendly, electrically conductive carbon material shown to have antib...

Recurrent influenza epidemics and pandemic potential are significant risks to global health. Public health authorities use clinical surveillance to locate and monitor influenza and influenza-like cases and outbreaks to mitigate hospitalizations and deaths. Currently, global integration of clinical surveillance is the only reliable method for report...

With the ever-increasing size of anaerobic digesters (AD), the management and disposal of digestate have become a challenging task for AD operators. Anaerobic digestate is rich in nutrients and contaminants; thus, a suitable treatment is required to meet environmental legislation and protect the receiving environment. There has been a thrust among...

Laser-induced graphene (LIG) is a method of generating a foam-like conformal carbon layer of porous graphene on many types of carbon-based surfaces. This electrically conductive material has been shown to be useful in many applications (e.g., environmental technology) and exhibits low fouling and antimicrobial surfaces. Moreover, polymers and concr...

Recurrent epidemics of influenza infection and its pandemic potential present a significant risk to global population health. To mitigate hospitalizations and death, local public health relies on clinical surveillance to locate and monitor influenza-like illnesses and/or influenza cases and outbreaks. At an international level, the global integrati...

Extremely low pH requirement and additional sludge management for the homogeneous electro-Fenton (EF) process necessitated the development of heterogeneous electro-Fenton (HEF) reactions that utilize solid catalysts that can be recovered and reused. In the recent decades, supported catalysts have immensely attracted researchers owing to the outstan...

Hexavalent chromium (Cr(VI)) contamination has gained interest from regulatory authorities due to its high toxicity and carcinogenicity. Different approaches have been applied for the remediation of Cr(VI) from aquatic media, with adsorption being the most common method. Biochar has gained popularity in recent years as a costeffective and greener a...

The presence of persistent organic pollutants (POPs) in wastewater remains a major challenge in worldwide. Conventional biological treatments that are most versatile and economical are not efficient in the complete removal of these pollutants due to their biorecalcitrant nature. Simultaneously, the application of advanced oxidation processes such a...

Rapid and sustained disinfection of surfaces is necessary to check communicability of microbial. The current study proposes a method of synthesis and use of copper nanoparticles (CuNP) for contact disinfection of pathogenic microorganisms. Polyphenol stabilized CuNP were synthesized by successive reductive disassembly and reassembly of copper pheno...

Landfilling is the most prominently adopted disposal technique for managing municipal solid waste across the globe. However, the main drawback associated with this method is the generation of leachate from the landfill site. Leachate, a highly concentrated liquid consisting of both organic and inorganic components arises environmental issues as it...

Enteric viruses are commonly present in water bodies in regions with poor sanitation. Although the occurrence of these viruses poses a health risk they are difficult to quantify due to their low concentration and they may remain undetected in the absence of adequate preconcentration. The present study reports the synthesis and utilization of DEAE s...

Due to rapid growth and modernization, the consumption of plastic has increased rapidly. However, due to the non-biodegradable nature of plastics, its management and disposal have become an environmental concern. The majority of plastics end up in landfill sites or oceans through rivers which is a threat to the marine ecosystem. Plastic can remain...

Group A Rotavirus (RVA), an enteric virus, is a major cause of gastroenteric disease and it is known to cause mortality among children, and infants. The applicability of coliforms and...

The contagious SARS-CoV-2 virus, responsible for COVID-19 disease, has infected over 27 million people across the globe within a few months. While literature on SARS-CoV-2 indicates that its transmission may occur predominantly via aerosolization of virus-laden droplets, the possibility of alternate routes of transmission and/or reinfection via the...

Adsorption elution technique is widely used for virus preconcentration before detection and quantification. However, the existing methods do not provide adequate recovery of viruses. DEAE cellulose, and Moringa oleifera seed protein functionalized rice husk ash (FaRHA) adsorbents were evaluated for the concentration of an enteric virus, Rotavirus A...

Treatment of recalcitrant organics and inorganics present in wastewater is amajor challenge. Conventional biological treatments alone are not capable ofremoving these toxic compounds from wastewater. To overcome these problems,advanced oxidation processes (AOPs) have been used to completely mineralize ortransform the organics into simpler compounds...

The present study focused on the treatment of anaerobically digested distillery wastewater (ADSW) by a bacterial method as the high COD (30–35 000 ppm), BOD (8–10 000 ppm), total solids (60–65 000 ppm) and presence of organic compounds even after anaerobic treatment of wastewater indicated that the conventional treatment methods are far from reachi...