CHON BURI: The growing number of Covid-19 patients in Pattaya is generating a huge amount of infectious waste, adding to the garbage disposal problems facing the seaside city.
Deputy mayor Manoj Nongyai, who is in charge of the city's environment office, said on Tuesday that before the Covid-19 pandemic, Pattaya had to handle about 800 kilogrammes of infectious waste each day.
That had now increased to 7-8 tonnes per day -- infectious waste from hospitals, hospitels and community isolation centres.
The company with the contract for garbage collection and disposal was not able to handle such an excessive quantity of infectious waste.
To solve the problem, the company had been asked to find and put more garbage trucks into service. The city administration had also trained and assigned employees to assist the company with the handling of infectious waste, which must be destroyed within seven days.
As the number of new Covid-19 infections continued to rise and more hospitels were opened to take in patients, the amount of infectious waste was also likely to increase.
Mr Manoj said Covid-infected people staying in hospitels and community isolation centres should put infectious waste in red bags, so it could be easily sorted for disposal. The bags are provided by the city, he said