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Production of rapid tests in China
Photo: Southern Visual/VCG/Getty Images
Sticks in your nose or throat, take a swab, done: In many countries, regular tests for the corona virus are an important part of the strategy to contain the virus.
But no other country tests as much as China.
Workers in full-body protective suits carry out hundreds of millions of corona tests here every day - even if there are only a few dozen Covid cases across the country.
It is above all such mass tests that are intended to support Beijing's zero-Covid strategy.
But it is now becoming more and more of an environmental problem: the tests produce tens of thousands of tons of medical waste.
The People's Republic is the last major country in the world that wants to prevent corona infections at all costs in order to avoid overloading the health system.
Therefore, on the one hand, there are extremely strict quarantine rules and, in some cases, lockdowns that last for months.
On the other hand, hundreds of millions of Chinese need to be tested every two or three days, some even daily.
In provincial capitals and metropolises with more than ten million inhabitants, the government stipulates that nobody should have to walk more than 15 minutes to the nearest PCR test site.
As a result, millions and millions of tubes, swabs, packaging and protective suits end up in the garbage every day.
"The amount of medical waste per day has reached levels that are practically unprecedented in human history," says Yifei Li, an environmental expert at New York University in Shanghai.
"The problems are already huge and will only get worse."
Due to the rapid economic development, China's environment is already heavily polluted.
Air and water pollution laws have been tightened in recent years.
The People's Republic wants to be CO2-neutral by 2060 - an ambitious goal that is almost impossible to achieve given the country's dependence on coal.
The mass PCR tests pose another ecological challenge for the country: If the medical waste is not disposed of properly, it can contaminate the soil and water.
68,500 tons of garbage just for Shanghai
There is no nationwide data on the amount of corona waste.
For Shanghai, the authorities said that during the lockdown from mid-March to early June, 68,500 tons of medical waste were generated there - six times more than usual.
Under Chinese law, authorities are responsible for sorting, disinfecting and storing this garbage until it is finally disposed of - usually by incineration.
"I'm not sure the country has the capacity to cope with this significant increase in medical waste," said Yanzhong Huang, public health expert at the US think tank Council on Foreign Relations.
Benjamin Steuer from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology also doubts that all municipalities dispose of waste correctly - and fears that it will simply end up in landfills.
Disposal is expensive.
The municipalities are already heavily burdened financially by the mass testing.
If all 1.4 billion Chinese are actually to be tested regularly, that would cost between 0.9 and 2.3 percent of gross domestic product, the Nomura Bank estimated in May.
Expert Jin Dong-yan, who teaches at the University of Hong Kong, considers routine PCR testing to be inefficient and expensive.
It forces local governments to refrain from making other meaningful investments in the health sector.
The highly contagious omicron variant of the virus cannot be contained with this, says Jin, “it will not work.” He is convinced: “Millions of dollars will be thrown out of the window.”
WHO calls for waste disposal strategies
The World Health Organization (WHO) has also warned of the huge amounts of medical waste and has called for strategies for proper disposal.
The mountains of garbage threatened human and environmental health, said a report that analyzed only small parts of the medical devices used during the pandemic.
This includes around 140 million corona test kits and 87,000 tons of medical protective clothing that were delivered between March 2020 and November 2021.
Most of it ends up as plastic waste.
According to the WHO report, there are about 2,600 tons of non-infectious plastic waste and 731,000 liters of chemical waste.
Last year, researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the University of California, San Diego estimated that the pandemic had created up to 8.4 million tons of additional plastic waste by the time of their study in August.
Corona has significantly increased the pressure on an already out of control global plastic waste problem.
joe/AFP