Effect of Hospitals Specialization and Severity of Disease on Bio-Medical Waste Generation? A Covid-19 Study of Hospitals

Abstract

In 2016 as per a revised policy, Indian hospitals it was made compulsory to segregate biomedical waste into four categories (clinical, infectious, sharp and bottle waste) on basis of their
disposal. Further, to adopt to the change in climate change some of these wastes (clinical and
sharp wastes) were categorized for further recycling. In this study using publicly available
panel data on bio-medical waste from Apollo-Hospitals of Chennai we try to explore the effect
of Covid-19 pandemic on waste generation. The entire sample study is categorized into prelockdown (no-suspension on activities) and lockdown period (all activities were suspended) as
was declared in India by the government in 2020. The Covid-19 active treatment cases in the
district where the hospital is situated was used to exploit cross-section variation in the degree
of Covid 19 severity and was interacted with lockdown. To control for the unobserved
individual hospital characteristics, we use fixed panel technique. In comparison of the prelockdown period, we find that in all categories of bio-medical waste there was a significant
reduction in the generation of wastes during the lock-down period. Severity of Covid-19 in the
districts increases the proportion of infectious waste generation but reduces the proportion of
sharp and bottle waste generation in the total waste. Whereas the other hospitals indicate a
significant decrease in the generation in bio-medical wastes, some speciality hospitals like
cancer shows an increase in the increase in bio-medical waste. The results indicate the huge
increase in the bio-medical waste generation during the post Covid-19 era is a result of
infectious waste.