Medical Waste Generation during COVID-19 (SARS-CoV-2) Pandemic and Its Management: An Indian Perspective

Abstract

The generation of biomedical waste has increased many times after the SARS Cov2 commencement. The biomedical waste generated from COVID-19 Patients is very infectious and contaminated. Thus, it is a big challenge with all stakeholders to avoid spreading of COVID-19 through it. This requires monitoring the complete cycle to the grave to be monitored from the cradle, if the spreading needs to be controlled. The COVID-19 waste generation, collection, storage, transportation and disposal is a big challenge withall stakeholders including isolation wards, quarantine centres, sample collection centres, laboratories, urban local bodies, and the Common Bio-medical Waste Treatment Facility (CBWTF) respectively. As its a novel virus and WHO has instructed that proper guidelines need to be followed with regards to COVID-19biomedical waste generation and its safe disposal. The Government of India has separately developed the Guidelines for the handling of COVID-19 biomedical waste, which needs to be followed besides BiomedicalRules, 2016 so that Corona spread through this can be controlled. Owing to its novel origin and least information about its behaviour, thus it is extremely important to take all precautions possible till we get some medical treatment.

Healthcare Waste Status and Handling Practices during COVID-19 Pandemic in Tepi General Hospital, Ethiopia

“…Furthermore, the absence of standard operating procedures and the healthcare waste management committee was an important finding in the hospital. This is in contrary to the national and international (WHO) recommendations of proper waste management during COVID-19 and the experiences of other countries [ 11 , 12 , 18 – 21 ].…”

Plasma gasification of the medical waste

“…Hazardous MWs are assumed to form 15% of the total waste production in a hospital and that value can also be as high as 35%, depending on the waste production characteristics [ [5] , [6] , [7] ]. According to the literature, production rates of MW in hospitals has increased by up to 280 tons/day during the COVID-19 outbreak [ [8] , [9] , [10] , [11] ]. These wastes require cold and ventilated storage in a separate area from hospitals until transported to incineration facilities by MW municipal trucks, high disposal costs for hospitals, strict emissions control for municipalities, and incineration facilities, and detailed considerations for health risks [ [12] , [13] , [14] , [15] , [16] , [17] ].…”

Environmental impact of COVID-19 pandemic: more negatives than positives

“…India is producing approximately 550 tons of biomedical waste (BMW) per annum which are treated by only 198 Common Bio-Medical Waste Treatment Facilities (CBMWTFs) and 225 captive incinerators (Singh et al 2019 ; Yadav et al 2020 ). It has been reported that during the present epidemic in Wuhan, China, the city produced 240 tons of additional medical waste per day (Ranjan et al 2020 ; Yu et al 2020 ; Zambrano-Monserrate et al 2020 ).…”

“…Dedicated vehicles must be employed to collect COVID-19 ward waste and its sanitization. The proper monitoring is quite essential while disposing of COVID-19 waste so the workers should not get infected by it (Kumar et al 2020 ; Ranjan et al 2020 ; Mahmood et al 2020 ). For discarding the BMW properly, it is important to know the composition so that its proper disposal can be ensured (Ilyas et al 2020 ).…”