Abstract
This study aims to investigate the potential safety hazards and provide reference for improving the medical waste disposal procedure in SARS-CoV-2 testing laboratory. Our SARS-CoV-2 testing group detected the RNA residue on the surface of medical waste with Droplet Digital PCR, and held a meeting to discuss the risks in the laboratory medical waste disposal process. After effective autoclaving, SARS-CoV-2 contaminated on the surface of medical waste bags was killed, but the average concentration of viral RNA residues was still 0.85 copies/cm2. It would not pose a health risk, but might contaminate the laboratory and affect the test results. When the sterilized medical waste bags were transferred directly by the operators without hand disinfection, re-contamination would happen, which might cause the virus to leak out of the laboratory. Furthermore, we found that sterilization effect monitoring and cooperation among operators were also very important. In summary, we investigated and analyzed the potential safety hazards during the medical waste disposal process in SARS-CoV-2 testing laboratory, and provided reasonable suggestions to ensure the safety of medical waste disposal.
Highlights
The COVID-19 epidemic has already spread around the world (Ali et al 2020; Liu et al 2020)
The samples indicated by BG, AG, BB, AB, and AGB were collected from outer gloves of operator before nucleic acid testing, outer gloves of operator after nucleic acid testing, medical waste bags before autoclaving, medical waste bags after autoclaving, and sterilized medical waste bags transferred by testers without hand disinfection after nucleic acid testing, respectively (Fig. 1)
All the surface of medical waste bags were positive for SARS-CoV-2 RNA and the concentration ranged from 16.80 to 37.80 copies/cm2, with an average of 22.84 copies/cm2
Summary
The COVID-19 epidemic has already spread around the world (Ali et al 2020; Liu et al 2020). Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) as the causative agent of COVID-19 is highly infectious and lethal (Harrison et al 2020, Koff and Williams 2020, Phua et al 2020). Y839, and 20A.EU1 make it spread faster (Baric 2020, Borges et al 2020, Hodcroft et al 2020, Kirby 2021). Laboratory testing of SARS-CoV-2 is allowed to be performed in the Biosafety Level 2(BSL-2) laboratory, which is generating a large amount of medical waste every day, including discarded samples, reagents, consumables, and personal protective equipment (Saadat et al 2020). Proper disposal of medical waste is a key to ensure laboratory safety and test.
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