Document Type : ORIGINAL RESEARCH ARTICLE
Authors
1 Department of Civil Engineering, Jordan University of Science and Technology, Irbid, Jordan
2 King Abdullah University Hospital, Jordan University of Science and Technology, Irbid, Jordan
3 University of Tennessee Health Science Center, Memphis, Tennessee, USA
Abstract
One of thesources of infection as a result of coronavirus disease treatment is the medical waste generated during the health care activities. Since the registration of the first infected case of coronavirus in Jordan the daily number of patients fluctuated from as low as zero to as high as 40 with a recovery ratio and case fatality risk of 39% and 1.7%, respectively. The main objective of the present study is to carry out statistical analysis and assess the generation rates and the composition of the medical waste generated during the treatment of coronavirus pandemic with reference to a major tertiary care hospital in Jordan. Data onthe daily generated waste, number of the admitted patients and on the amounts of consumables like various personal protective equipment, testing kits, and disinfectant used during the treatment of coronavirus disease was obtained. Data was subjected to descriptive statistical analysis to find the average generation rates, 3 days moving average, as well as the frequency distribution of the generated amounts. During 25 days' period, King Abdullah University Hospital has admitted 95 infected patients by coronavirus. The amount of the average rate of the medical waste generated as a result of coronavirus treatment was found to be 14.16 kg/patient/day and 3.95 kg/bed/day, which are more than tenfold higher than the average generation rate during the regular operational days of the hospital. Frequency analysis of the data revealed that the medical waste generation follows log normal distribution with correlation coefficient of 0.89. The distribution is distorted to the right and flatter than the normal distribution curve as judged by the skewness and kurtosis coefficients, respectively, which indicates deviation from normality.
Graphical Abstract
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Highlights
- Novel coronavirus disease is widely spreading which is putting the whole world on alert;
- The issue of medical waste generation and characteristics during the treatment coronavirus patients is not adequately covered by researchers.
- High amounts of medical waste is associated with the treatment of coronavirus patients that may pose a risk of infection;
- Medical waste generated amounts in northern Jordan during coronavirus treatment are tenfold higher than normal;
- Frequency of generated medical waste amounts was found to follow log normal distribution.
Keywords
- Average generation rate
- Coronavirus (COVID 19)
- Descriptive statistics
- Jordan
- King Abdullah University Hospital (KAUH)
- Medical waste
Main Subjects
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Copyrights
©2021 The author(s). This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, as long as the original authors and source are cited. No permission is required from the authors or the publishers.
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