The side effects of a global pandemic certainly aren’t as high on the list of priorities as, you know, dealing with the actual pandemic, but it certainly doesn’t make them any less real and concerning. As COVID-19 spreads around the globe, we’ve seen countries everywhere start to deal with shortages of medical supplies, but what happens to the tons and tons of medical supplies that have already been used? Medical waste is a big problem, and coronavirus treatment is producing a lot of it right now.
Medical waste is and solid waste that is created during the diagnosis, treatment, or immunization of people. Basically, it’s rubbish that’s usually covered in bodily fluids. When we’re dealing with a disease like COVID-19 that is so incredibly contagious, the question becomes what do we do with this growing pile of infectious landfill?
In Wuhan, we all saw pictures of the new hospitals that were being built to cope with the coronavirus patients, but they also built and entirely new medical waste disposal centre to keep up with the demand as well.
Back in Australia, we’ve been struggling with medical waste for some time now, and last year – before we’d ever heard of coronavirus – the healthcare industry was already reporting dealing with a ‘devastating’ amount of rubbish.
According to the Waste Management and Resource Recovery Association of Australia, “it is prudent to suggest the adoption of additional measures.” These measures are double bagging medical waste, extra wiping down of surfaces, and keeping extra records of where the waste ends up. Until we can work out how else to process the sheen amount of waste being produced, this is a good start.
There are a lot of unknowns when it comes to this pandemic, and the amount of medical waste we’ll end up with is just another one of them. Keeping the waste safe and secure is going to be a massive job, and not one we should overlook.
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