Medical Waste after COVID-19 Pandemic, Management and Environmental Impacts

Since December 2019, the onset of COVID-19 disease has ranked first as the most important event worldwide. It is a contagious virus that starts as a respiratory system problem in general and causes many different symptoms depending on the human immune system in the body. It is tried to be protected from the contagious effect of the disease with the immunity system of the people and the individual protection rules. As of mid-June 2022, Corona-19 pandemic virus cases are estimated at 550 million worldwide, while deaths from the disease are estimated at 6.4 million. About 500 tons medical waste is produced every day in conneted to COVID-19, where the first case was seen in the Chinese province of Wuhan. With the data obtained in Indonesia (Jakarta), approximately 13 thousand tons of medical waste was reached 60 days after the first infection in humans, with the medical waste scale. Resently, millions ton virus contaminated masks, gloves, and medical supplies are in the process of creating irreversible infectious waste, for testing to detect and detect Covid-19 and other human pathogens, and to treat infection. In the case of solid waste management, improper storage, transportation and improper use cause environmental and health problems. In addition, due to the significant waste in healthcare services caused by the COVID-19 virus pandemic, it is thought that the unsafe disposal of hospital wastes will threaten to spread environmental pollution. As a result, one of the many environmental problems that will necessarily arise is infectious waste, which can cause serious diseases and environmental problems if not managed properly. One of the effects of the increase in Covid-19 cases on medical waste was to further increase the generation of such waste, which is 0.95 to 3.52 kg per day per bed in hospitals. Medical masks, gloves and protective clothing, which are the main defense tools in the fight and protection against Covid-19, are becoming an increasing problem of medical waste around the world. In addition, uncollected medical wastes enter the aquatic environment in the sewer or environment after being transported by wind and rain. In order to reduce the waste load and pollution, from municipal and industrial waste need to be recycled and reused. Again, infectious and dangerous hospital wastes should be managed correctly by the municipality and other responsible persons. For this, appropriate methods should be put forward to control the environmental impact and waste. In this study, the applicability of thermochemical conversion technologies to dispose of COVID-19 medical wastes was evaluated. Moreover; Processes including heating, pyrolysis, carbonization and gasification were evaluated. Among these incineration, thermo-chemical technologies, digestion is thought to facilitate variety of contaminated medical waste types, followed by gasification and pyrolysis.