Medical as well as sanitary workers in the city are being put in harm’s way as COVID biological waste is being burnt, tossed in garbage and mixed with regular trash.
“We burn the PPE kits everyday. They are used by the staff who do COVID-19 tests. We collect them, pack them in a box and burn them,” said a health worker at the Golconda Area Hospital.
Four cardboard boxes filled with PPEs were still burning when this reporter visited the site. Behind the COVID-19 testing centre in the hospital, the biological waste of test kits and discarded gloves are also burnt on a daily basis.
Elsewhere in the city, in some of the Primary Health Centres, the CBW is thrown with regular trash into garbage bins. “We don’t know when they will come to collect it, so we drop it at this garbage bin as we have to carry on our work everyday,” said a healthcare worker at a PHC in Malakpet area who has to cross the road with the yellow bags to reach the overfilled garbage bin.
Hyderabad has 97 government facilities where on an average 60 to 200 tests are performed everyday. This number doesn’t include centres in private domain or where RT-PCR tests are conducted.
The Central Pollution Control Board guidelines for waste from test centres and labs are the same as that of isolation wards and they should be collected in red bags. This localised waste disposal is in sharp contrast to the strict norms laid out by CPCB, which is followed by Ramky Enviro (REEL) tasked with disposing of the CBW in Hyderabad.
“COVID biological waste gets priority over everything else. We dispose of it immediately in static or rotary incinerators at temperatures ranging from 850 degree to 1,050 degree Celsius. The flu gas is also monitored on a continual basis,” said Masood Mallick of Ramky Enviro. Asked about slippages in collection, he said, “We have a specialised staff who have volunteered and have been incentivised for the task. From the point of pick up to transport, treatment and disposal, everything is tracked on a continuous basis.”
The PCB has rolled out an Android App called COVID19BWM which helps track the movement of the waste from labs, quarantine centres and hospitals.
Telangana processed 68.82 tonnes of COVID biological waste (CBW) in December, according to data from the Central Pollution Control Board. Comparatively, Chandigarh, which has a population of 11 lakh, treated 73.19 tonnes of CBW. From a peak of 188.82 tonnes in September, this sharp dip in the quantity of biological waste shows either how the impact of the pandemic is on the wane or the slippages in CBW have increased.