Morocco Grapples with Waste Management for Home-Treated COVID-19 Patients

All the cities of Morocco have adopted the home treatment of asymptomatic cases. Rabat for example already has about thirty patients spread across about twenty households. Everything is going without major incidents, according to an official from the Rabat Health Delegation. But Lahcen Elomrani, 1st Vice-President of the Rabat commune, does not share the same view. He thinks that the biggest difficulty resulting from this new provision is the management of household waste. For him, these are medical and dangerous waste that must be treated with the same care as those from hospitals, reports L’Économiste.

He says he has sent a letter on the issue to the Rabat Health Delegate, so that measures are taken to protect the population against a proliferation of the virus. As the person in charge of the waste service at the capital level, he says he is conducting awareness campaigns with waste collection companies to respect the clauses of the contracts that relate to household and similar waste.

As for the Health Delegation, it stressed that "this waste is considered infectious, with a completely different circuit from that reserved for household waste". For him, the ministry has taken all precautions and ensures that the treatment of waste from home patients is done under good conditions. They must be placed in a plastic bag provided by the Health Delegation services. Once the bag is full, it must be closed and disinfected on the outside with a bleach solution, before being disposed of with household waste, the same source specifies.