A biosafety level 2 surrogate for studying SARS-CoV-2 survival in food processing environmental biofilms

Meat processing plants have been at the center of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. There are several factors that contribute to the persistence of SARS-CoV-2 in meat processing plants and one of the factors is the formation of a multi-species biofilm with virus. Biofilm can act as a reservoir in protecting, harboring, and dispersing SARS-CoV-2 from biofilm to the meat processing facility environment. We used Murine Hepatitis Virus (MHV) as a surrogate for SARS-CoV-2 virus and meat processing facility drain samples to develop mixed-species biofilms on commonly found materials in processing facilities (Stainless-Steel (SS), PVC and tiles). The results showed that MHV was able to integrate into the environmental biofilm and survived for a period of 5 days at 7{degrees}C. There was no significate difference between the viral-environmental biofilm biovolumes developed on different materials SS, PVC, and tiles. There was a 2-fold increase in the virus-environmental biofilm biovolume when compared to environmental biofilm by itself. These results indicate a complex virus-environmental biofilm interaction which is providing enhanced protection for the survival of viral particles with the environmental biofilm community.