Garbage oozing with infectious bodily fluids or contaminated tissues floating around the streets may only feel fictitious to many; nonetheless, the increase in infectious waste that is not being properly disposed of is a mounting concern. As coronavirus disease (COVID-19) patients continue to emerge, patients and healthcare workers alike are rapidly going through disposable protective equipment and remedial supplies. The used gear, in turn, becomes medical waste that needs to be safely discarded at all costs. In Wuhan, China, the influx of COVID-19 patients resulted in the construction of not only new hospitals; officials had to also build a new medical waste plant and deploy various mobile waste removal facilities. Likewise, medical waste disposal has become a serious issue here in South Korea.
Filled to the Brim with Medical Waste
As the COVID-19 situation is being drawn out and the number of daily confirmed cases remains near 400, the amount of medical waste has skyrocketed. According to the government’s report, the medical waste caused solely by the pandemic increased by about 18 percent compared to the same period last year. The Korea Environment Corporation has also reported that the amount of quarantine medical waste increased by about 2.7 times in amount compared to when the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) spread. In turn, the seriousness of the situation has only been aggravated. To add insult to injury, the abundance of the waste poses a threat to not only humankind, but also the environment.
Professor Phae Chae-gun (Department of Environmental Technology, Seoul National University of Science and Technology) stated that the classification of pandemic waste changed from “infectious waste” to “medical waste” and that this change was “to expand the management of waste generated by medical institutions, for its infectivity can damage the main body of management, people, and the natural eco-system.” In other words, Professor Phae pointed out that the accumulated medical waste is unquestionably infectious and could exacerbate climate change and ecological destruction. Therefore, an extremely thorough approach to disposal is much needed.
Accumulating Problems in the Method of Disposal
In Korea, regulations on how to treat waste vary by location and are set by state health and environmental departments, as well as by the Department of Transportation. Generally, to make sure contaminated trash from healthcare facilities does not pose any harm to the public, it is burned and sterilized before going to a landfill.
The current governmental guidelines for the waste disposal process require medical waste to be recorded in what is called Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID), which the government has mandated since 2008. Under this particular system, medical institutions are required to attach RFID electronic tags to medical waste containers when discharging them. During the transportation of tagged waste to a vehicle, medical institutions read the electronic tags, automatically recording the time of discharge. As the last step of the process, waste disposal companies read the tags again before incineration, to record specific information regarding its origin and placement.
Nonetheless, according to media source Dong-A Ilbo’s analysis, a number of cases have been confirmed in which the information of medical waste has been falsely entered. Medical waste discharged from Ewha Womans University’s Mokdong Hospital on July 27, 2020 was brought to Arim Environment, a medical waste disposal company. However, the date of incineration was recorded as three days ahead of the date of warehousing. Altogether, more than 6,000 cases of waste were similarly recorded to have been burned before they were. In such cases, the inaccurate data can cause confusion about the whereabouts of the waste and whether it has been destroyed, causing more mass infection. These faults led to the question of where this governmentally mandated method was going wrong and even the validity of the process, including the incinerations.
In terms of the RFID method, the problem is rooted in the scanning of tags. The data of medical waste in question is often not even correctly recorded from the electronic recognition sensors. Instead, the protocol is that the waste records that have not been automatically sent are manually reported by the incinerator conductors. As a result, it became more and more crucial that the contemporary technique of disposal either be replaced or enhanced.
Potential Solutions
Nevertheless, there is still hope for RFID, as experts emphasized room for plentiful improvement. Regarding the RFID data of the medical waste, Professor Kim Jae-Hyoun (Department of Health Science, Dongduk Women’s University) stated, “Despite its cost, the RFID system remains a solid process. There are connectivity and incidental problems with International Technology (IT), but I think it will be fully resolved.” He added that the best solution is to utilize “the application of a 'cradle to grave' tracking system to an ‘occurrence-storage-collection-transportation’ process.”
As an additional solution to the current disposal procedures, Professor Kim contended that the fundamental requirement is “risk communication with residents,” which is the ongoing exchange of information between consumers, academia, and other stakeholders. “It is necessary to learn to communicate with the public through multiple media, using the case of the MERS pandemic as a lesson,” he detailed. Furthermore, Professor Phae maintained, “We need to find ways to reuse resources while thoroughly preventing secondary damage caused by pathogens.” He further declared, “If the material is fully sterilized, it could be separately discharged and recycled.”
The system to dispose of medical waste needs to be reorganized soon. Medical waste related to COVID-19 needs special measures that are applied with stricter management standards than the current regulations. If an efficient system is not created or another faulty system emerges yet again, its consequences may critically impact the pandemic situation.