On Monday, the Parliament was informed that around 656 tons per day (TPD) of biomedical waste was generated across the country in 2020, of which 590 TPD was collected and treated by common biomedical waste treatment facilities.

Minister of State for Environment, Ashwini Kumar Choubey, further added that there was a generation of about 84.61 TPD of incremental COVID-19 biomedical waste from May 2020 to February 2022 from different healthcare, quarantine, sample collection and home isolation centers and labs, involved in diagnosis, treatment and quarantine of COVID patients. He further added that the Central Pollution Control Board had issued guidelines for proper management of the Covid-waste and had developed an application, COVID19BWM, to track the generation and treatment of the Covid waste in the treatment facilities.

No cases of violation of the CPCB guidelines were reported, but notices had been issued to 33 facilities across the country for not reporting data on COVID19BWM. Currently, the data from SPCBs/PCCs for 2020 stated that 208 common biomedical waste treatment facilities were operating in the country. Nine states/Union Territories had no such facility, so captive treatment facilities operated by the healthcare facilities themselves were treating and disposing of the biomedical waste in these areas. (ET Healthworld - IANS, March 15, 2022)