Dalian disposes of medical waste created by COVID-19 safely

Dalian, Liaoning province, has ensured safe treatment of all its medical waste and medical waste water during the fight against the COVID-19 epidemic, an official with local environmental authorities said at a news conference on Sunday.

Since the emergence of the COVID-19 outbreak on July 22, a total of 508 tons of medical waste has been generated in the northeastern port city by Aug 8, said Qu Xiaoxin, deputy director of the Dalian Ecology and Environment Bureau.

"It includes 281 tons of COVID-19 related medical waste from designated medical institutions, centralized quarantine sites and nucleic acid testing sites," Qu said, adding it was all disposed of safely and harmlessly.

The peak was on July 28, with a daily production of 35.7 tons, she said, as the large-scale nucleic acid tests for all residents have completed and the number for the tests are declining, the daily amount of medical waste has stabilized.

A total of 143,000 tons of medical waste water was treated in designated hospitals, fever clinics and quarantine sites, Qu said.

The monitoring results from local environmental authorities show that all of the 33 sewage treatment plants that receive sewage from designated hospitals and quarantine sites are in stable operation and discharge up to the standard.

For three consecutive days, the port city has identified no confirmed locally transmitted cases or asymptomatic infections. It now has 79 confirmed cases hospitalized and 18 asymptomatic carriers under medical observation, Zhao Lian, deputy director of the Dalian Health Commission, said.

In the past days, 13 confirmed patients and eight asymptomatic carriers were discharged from hospital in Dalian.

Meanwhile, more medium-risk areas in the city are returning to normal production and life. One residential community in Xigang district lifted lockdown on Aug 6, two communities in Dalian Jinpu New Area lifted lockdown on Saturday.

After they were classified as medium-risk areas on July 25, there had been no new confirmed locally-transmitted cases for 14 consecutive days. All the residents had taken nucleic acid tests and the results were negative, Zhao said.