Projection of incinerators for medical waste processing during a pandemic: a case study of COVID-19 in Jakarta Province

Abstract

Medical waste management due to the COVID-19 pandemic is important and urgent. An approach is needed to assess the weight of medical waste and to design appropriate waste management. The research was conducted in 2020 when the pandemic was still ongoing and had not yet reached the peak of the outbreak. Thus, the analysis was built based on assumptions and available data. The research was quantitative. Data were collected digitally (by big data retrieval and web survey) on the COVID-19 referral hospitals in Jakarta Province. The results showed that before the pandemic the weight of inpatients' medical waste was 1.57 kg/bed/day, while for COVID-19 inpatients was 1.84 kg/bed/day. The last number was processed with a limited projection of Jakarta population in 2020, then tested using two scenarios. First scenario was a pandemic condition without treatment. Second scenario was a pandemic condition plus vaccinations on D11. First scenario resulted that on D75, almost all residents of Jakarta would be infected with the SARS-COV2 virus and the maximum capacity of hospital incinerators in Jakarta was reached on D11. Second scenario resulted that the plague rate is resolved so that it does not infect all residents of Jakarta, but the capacity of hospital incinerators in Jakarta is still not adequate (limit on D11). Research has implications for environmental management budget planning in dealing with infectious disease outbreaks. The research recommendation is to calculate the weight of COVID-19 medical waste according to current conditions, which includes parameters such as the maximum hospital occupancy rate and the availability of large-scale incinerators belong to third-party.