Vijay Chahat, Modi Kanak, Rajput Nitesh Singh, Sharma Vinay, Prasad Jagdish, Kulshreshtha Shweta
Amity Institute of Biotechnology, Amity University Rajasthan, Jaipur, India.
Amity School of Applied Sciences, Amity University Rajasthan, Jaipur, India.
Vegetos. 2023;36(1):229-237. doi: 10.1007/s42535-022-00536-7. Epub 2022 Dec 15.
In this COVID-19 era, isolating people and reviewing their contacts has proven to be insufficient to control the COVID-19 pandemic as there was a huge gap between exposure to the virus and isolation due to the late onset of symptoms. This led to the spread of infection and people faced the consequences not only of viral infection, but also of financial and occupational crises. People followed best management practices, however, new variants emerged that caused infection. With little information on new COVID-19 variants and their transmission, the disease spread rapidly in humans. Until now, the link between the spread of COVID-19 and the disposal of biomedical waste with household waste has not been established. Therefore, the only way to prevent infection is to make people aware. It is still necessary to open the doors for research to find the possible cause of the appearance of a new variant of COVID-19. To cope with the situation, the level of awareness among the public and their action towards the prevention of spread of infection caused by COVID-19 and its emerging variants must be known. Therefore, a survey was conducted in Jaipur from January to February 2022 to find out the status of awareness. Results of the survey revealed that both people are aware about the infection caused by COVID-19 and its variants. They are also aware about the precautions to be followed to protect themselves from acquiring COVID-19 infection. Most of the people are using masks but not gloves to prevent themselves from the infection. Merely, 71.6% of young, 100% of adults, 40% of old people sanitize their masks and gloves before disposal. Only 66.5% people are using separate bags for the collection of wastes. Despite of awareness about biomedical waste, 25% of young never sanitize, and 26.13% of young seldom sanitizes their waste before disposal. Such types of cases were not observed in adults and old age groups. Similarly, 2.3% of young did not sanitize PPE kit prior to disposal. Results of this study revealed that there is awareness about the different strains of corona virus and biomedical wastes. However, some people showed casual behaviour in the waste disposal practices. The strict implementation of rules to dispose biomedical waste will be useful for dealing with biomedical waste in this pandemic period.
在新冠疫情时代，事实证明，隔离人员并排查其接触者不足以控制新冠疫情大流行，因为由于症状出现较晚，病毒暴露与隔离之间存在巨大差距。这导致了感染的传播，人们不仅面临病毒感染的后果，还面临金融和职业危机。人们遵循了最佳管理做法，然而，新的变种出现并引发了感染。由于关于新冠病毒新变种及其传播的信息很少，这种疾病在人类中迅速传播。到目前为止，新冠疫情的传播与生物医疗废物与生活垃圾的处理之间的联系尚未建立。因此，预防感染的唯一方法是提高人们的意识。仍然有必要为研究敞开大门，以找出新冠病毒新变种出现的可能原因。为应对这种情况，必须了解公众的意识水平以及他们针对预防新冠疫情及其新出现变种所引发感染的行动。因此，2022年1月至2月在斋浦尔进行了一项调查，以了解人们的意识状况。调查结果显示，人们既了解新冠病毒及其变种所引发的感染，也了解为保护自己免受新冠病毒感染而应采取的预防措施。大多数人使用口罩，但不使用手套来预防感染。仅有71.6%的年轻人、100%的成年人、40%的老年人在丢弃口罩和手套前对其进行消毒。只有66.5%的人使用单独的袋子来收集垃圾。尽管人们了解生物医疗废物，但25%的年轻人从不消毒，26.13%的年轻人在丢弃垃圾前很少对其进行消毒。在成年人和老年人组中未观察到此类情况。同样，2.3%的年轻人在丢弃个人防护装备套件前未进行消毒。这项研究的结果表明，人们对新冠病毒的不同毒株和生物医疗废物有一定认识。然而，一些人在废物处理做法上表现出随意的行为。严格执行生物医疗废物处理规则将有助于在这一疫情期间处理生物医疗废物。
