Abstract
COVID-19, the novel corona virus has become a household name. The global COVID-19 outbreak, become a pandemic in early 2020, and spurred millions of life across the world. The pandemic is spreading extremely and its impacts upon human health and environment intensifying day-by-day. Biomedical waste generated daily due to COVID-19 are about the major environmental health concern and its critical management becomes a global challenge. Tones of COVID-19 contaminated wastes are generated every day worldwide and its sound management is very essential to break the disease transmission. The safe and sustainable management of COVID-19 contaminated biomedical waste (BMW) is a social and legal responsibility of all people during this critical period of disease transmission. Unsound management of this waste could cause unforeseen “knock-on” effects on human health and the environment. Health workers, municipal workers, rag-pickers and other persons who are involved directly or indirectly in the COVID -19 war are at high risk and needs to be careful while discharging their responsibility with an efficient and effective waste disposal mechanism.
1. Introduction
Viral pathogens can be transmitted to healthcare and recycling workers due to the improper disposal or handling of contaminated waste. It has been found that due to improper disposal of medical waste up to 30 % of hepatitis B, 1–3 % of hepatitis C, and 0.3 % of HIV rates have been communicated from patients to healthcare workers (Singh et al., 2020). Therefore in a bid to maintain community sanitation amid corona virus spread, disposal of biomedical waste is of utter importance. The disease not only killing millions valuable life but also brought challenges for the management of the waste generated from hospital, municipal, and house contaminated with COVID-19. Most of the people round the globe are suffering and many institutions and industries are locked, people lost their jobs as well. Due to this outbreak, tones of medical wastes such as masks, gloves, gowns are generated daily. According to the South China Morning Post reports, during the pandemic at Wuhan the quantity of medical waste produced daily was increased from 40-ton to 240 tons. During this COVID-19 pandemic, production of medical waste has greatly increased in different country (Table 1).
6. Conclusion
COVID-waste may cause to the community spread if not handled properly. In the present study, various sources of COVID-19 waste generation, its possible disinfection and disposal strategy have been discussed in details which can assist the engineers, environmentalist, healthcare personnel and local municipal authorities to plan and manage the present pandemic hazardous waste. Besides training programs and social awareness, strict execution of identification, segregation, disinfection, transportation and safe disposal practice are the key factors for effective and safe management of COVID-19 waste. As community waste becomes logistical and practical challenge hence public participation along with proper micro-management policies for collection of community waste should be adopted.
