Australia’s healthcare system is generating tonnes of COVID waste with new research finding a healthcare organisation in Melbourne increasing their clinical waste by 40% during the pandemic.
Doctor Forbes McGain has long been on a war against waste at Western Health's hospital at Sunshine in Melbourne's north and says that a nurse may go through 30 gowns in one standard day. Overall, waste streams are up 8.5% from 2.3 million kilograms in 2019 to 2.5 million kilograms this year.
A three month trial at St Vincent's hospital in Sydney revealed that 80,000 pieces of plastic waste were collected that weighed 205 kilograms – equivalent to 41,000 plastic bags. The scheme has since expanded to include a COVID-19 vaccination hub in Newcastle, where 170 kilograms of plastic caps from vaccines were collected in just a few weeks.
The Australian healthcare sector's reliance on single-use plastic has never been more visible than during the COVID-19 pandemic and doctors and nurses are openly concerned about the levels of waste they are seeing.