Need to concentrate on biomedical waste

Kaustov Kashyap
The second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic has posed numerous challenges before India on multiple fronts such as health, economy and environment. One such impact of the Covid-19 outbreak on our environment which is exponentially increasing is biomedical waste.
Data suggests that average generation of Covid-19 related biomedical waste during May 2021 is 203 tonnes per day. The ‘peak’ generation was 250 tonnes per day which was reported on May 10. The earlier ‘peak’ generation in 2020 during the 1st week was in the range of 180-220 tonnes per day.While there are guidelines to handle medical waste with utmost care and dispose them safely, the exponential rise in the quantity of biomedical waste due to pandemic and lack of awareness on how to dispose them safely has made the task very challenging and difficult.
(To be contd)